Search results for 'tag:Simple past tag:Gerunds' matching tags 'Simple past' and 'Gerunds'

Re: When the teacher (had) arrived, they stopped talking.

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:05:24 GMT

This is the use of the past perfect. You use the past perfect when you have two events that happened in the past and you want to put them together in one sentence. The event that happened firts is spoken in past perfect which means you have to use the auxilary "had + verb in past participle" and the event that happened second is spoken in simple past. The most common connectors are: before, after, when and by the time. The first thing that you have to decide is in which order the events happened. There are many ways to write the sentence that depends on what connector you are using.
e.g. This happended first: all the passangers got out of the plane.
This happened after: the plane exploded.

All the passangers had gotten out of the plane when / before / by the time the plane exploded. or
Before / by the time / when the plane explded, all the passangers had already gotten out of the plane. (already is only for emphasis) or
The plane exploded after the passengers had gotten out of the plane.

Using the past perfect simple (had + verb in past participle)
means that the event that happened first stopped before or long before the second one started.

Using the past perfect continuous or progressive (had + been + verb in gerund ing) means that the first event stopped at the same time the second started.
e.g. I had been driving my new car for only 3 months when my brother crashed it.

I hope this info is helpful.

Re: 1)I sat on the terrace, drinking coffee.

Belly — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 07:39:50 GMT

Hoa Thai wrote:
Belly wrote:

Ok I understood that drinking implies a continuous activity, but it may violate with the parallelsim, may not it?

Not really! This sentence contains the vilolation: "He sat at the terrace and was drinking coffee." One clause uses the simple past tense and the other uses the past progressive tense. In your previous sentence, 'drinking' is a gerund (a noun form of a verb). 'Drinking coffee' is noun phrase acts as an adjectival component.

Belly wrote:

According to my grammar book, could isn't used in context like this. Could is used when we generally referring to the past.

I don't know what you mean. Please quote your book.

Belly wrote:

I'm with you in the last question, Hoa Thai, I don't know why my teacher corrected so. Notwithstanding, you can see my original work at http://www.englishforums.com/English/CorrectEssay/zwlkz/Post.htm. It's my orginal work befored it was modified by my teacher.

Could you show what I shared with you to your teacher and ask for his opinion?

My take:

1. 'go to (vocational) school' represents a task students do.
2. 'go to a (vocational) school' represents an undefinitive selection.
3. I am troubled by 'go to (vocational) schools' and would like to hear others' opinions.

Take care,
Hoa Thai
EDIT NOTE: I will look at your other post and share with you my opinion later.
EDIT NOTE #2: I saw 'school' instead of 'schools' in your other post!

I haven't seen that we can use past and past continuous in like that. I sat there drinking coffee. What is an adjectival component? I sat there drinking coffee, which occurs first? which later?

Yes, the original was school, but my teacher corrected it into schools

Re: 1)I sat on the terrace, drinking coffee.

Hoa Thai — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:51:07 GMT

Belly wrote:
Ok I understood that drinking implies a continuous activity, but it may violate with the parallelsim, may not it?

Not really! This sentence contains the vilolation: "He sat at the terrace and was drinking coffee." One clause uses the simple past tense and the other uses the past progressive tense. In your previous sentence, 'drinking' is a gerund (a noun form of a verb). 'Drinking coffee' is noun phrase acts as an adjectival component.

Belly wrote:
According to my grammar book, could isn't used in context like this. Could is used when we generally referring to the past.

I don't know what you mean. Please quote your book.

Belly wrote:

I'm with you in the last question, Hoa Thai, I don't know why my teacher corrected so. Notwithstanding, you can see my original work at http://www.englishforums.com/English/CorrectEssay/zwlkz/Post.htm. It's my orginal work befored it was modified by my teacher.

Could you show what I shared with you to your teacher and ask for his opinion?

My take:

1. 'go to (vocational) school' represents a task students do.
2. 'go to a (vocational) school' represents an undefinitive selection.
3. I am troubled by 'go to (vocational) schools' and would like to hear others' opinions.

Take care,
Hoa Thai
EDIT NOTE: I will look at your other post and share with you my opinion later.
EDIT NOTE #2: I saw 'school' instead of 'schools' in your other post!

Re: Passive

Yankee — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:32:19 GMT

Lin1978 wrote:
Thank you, Master Yankee. Your answer is quite clear. But I still have one small question. Last time my teacher told me that, "if I have two different subjects in a main clause and in a conditional, and I want to use the participle phrase, I have to keep both two subjects or change it into possessive case to avoid getting confused." That sounds about right, except that you cannnot simply insert the subject into a participle phrase. You must also change the participle to the appropriate verb tense.

In this sentence, there is no need to add "we" or "they" in the conditional (1), like "after we repeating the experiments and tests, PS3 has finally been successfully produced,"(2) or change it into "after our repeating experiments and tests, PS3 has finally been successfully produced." (3) Because the subject is clear and no one will get confused. Am I right?

Hi Lin1978

(1) The sentence you are referring to is not a conditional sentence.

(2) "after we repeating the experiments and tests,..." ==> This is never grammatical!

"After repeating the experiments and tests" is grammatical" and it means:
- "After the experiments and tests were repeated, ..." (simple past tense, passive voice)
OR
- "After I/you/he/she/we/they/ repeated the experiments and tests, ..." (simple past tense, active voice)

The passive voice is frequently used when it is not important or not known who performed the action. In the active sentence above, I don't know who repeated the experiments and tests. However, I assume it was the same person or people who produced PS3.

(3) In a passive sentence, the subject is usually unknown or not important. As I mentioned above, in your sentence it can be assumed that the same person or people who produced PS3 also performed the experiments and test. But there is no way for me to know exactly who that person or those people were.

Inserting a possessive adjective before a gerund does not always result in a natural construction.
"After our repeating the experiments and tests" is extremely awkard. Your sentence is not a good candidate for the insertion of the possessive adjective.

Re: "...creative writing that I have written/had written/wrote."

Clive — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 04:35:43 GMT

Hi,

I wonder what are the differences between these sentences? Here are a a few brief comments.

The repetitious use of the gerund 'writing' + the verb 'write' in the same sentence is poor style. Let's talk about an essay instead.

This is an essay that I have written. Suggests the essay has some importance now. eg Perhaps you want me to read it.

This is an essay that I wrote. Suggests more that you are just focusing on the past, telling me about the writing as a simple past event of no real relevance or importance now.

This is an essay that I had written.The past perfect focuses on this past event in relation to some other point in the past which you have not mentioned in this sentence.

Best wishes, Clive

Re: quit

Diamondrg — Fri, 18 May 2007 14:37:35 GMT

Clive wrote:

Hi,

Can "quit" be used as both a gerund and an infinitive like "stop"?

- We stopped / quitted to have a break.

- They stopped / quitted searching for the missing boy.

Yes.

When you use 'quit' like this meaning 'give up a task', the simple past tense is 'quit', ie it's irregular.

You don't have any gerunds in your examples, only simple past tenses. The gerund is 'stopping', 'quitting'. eg He thought about quitting. Quitting was impossible.

Nor do you have any infinitives for 'stop' or 'quit' in your examples. eg 'to stop / to quit was impossible'.

Best wishes, Clive

Hi Clive

We quitted to have a break. ('to have' infinitive)

We quitted searching for the missing boy. ('searching' gerund)

My question is whether "We quitted to have a break" is right or not. You said, "Yes", so I understand you say it is right, but Jim says it is wrong. So what am I supposed to understand from this?

Re: quit

Clive — Fri, 18 May 2007 01:29:45 GMT

Hi,

Can "quit" be used as both a gerund and an infinitive like "stop"?

- We stopped / quitted to have a break.

- They stopped / quitted searching for the missing boy.

Yes.

When you use 'quit' like this meaning 'give up a task', the simple past tense is 'quit', ie it's irregular.

You don't have any gerunds in your examples, only simple past tenses. The gerund is 'stopping', 'quitting'. eg He thought about quitting. Quitting was impossible.

Nor do you have any infinitives for 'stop' or 'quit' in your examples. eg 'to stop / to quit was impossible'.

Best wishes, Clive

Re: [is, am, are] + Past Participle

CalifJim — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 04:18:32 GMT

Simple present. They all form a logical pattern. You are wrong about present perfect, by the way.

am, is, are + -ing Present continuous
was, were + -ing Past continuous

am, is, are + anything else Simple present
was, were + anything else Simple past

has, have + been + -ing Present perfect continuous
had + been + -ing Past perfect continuous

has, have + -en Present perfect
had + -en Past perfect

-ing is a symbolic way of indicating "present participle" (or "gerund" if you like that term better)
-en indicates "past participle" (even if the ending is something else like -ed)

CJ

Re: What is the form of ''be''? Is it Pres tense form, Past tense form, or

Bird Of Paradise — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 11:47:30 GMT

Jackson6612 wrote:
I think names for those six forms of certain verb are:

Infinitive form, Simple Present Tense form, Simple Past Tense form, Past Participle, Present Participle.

For example:

to go, go, went, gone, going.

I don't know the name for sixth form? Perhaps it's bare infinitive. But there is no difference between Simple Present Tense form and bare Infinitive form of a certain verb. Is there any difference? Although Gerund and Present Participle also look same but there is difference in their use. Check this link http://www.kfmaas.de/presentparticiple.html to look the differnce in the use of Gerund and Present Participle. Likewise, perhaps there is also some difference in the use of bare Infinitive and Simple Present Tense form.

Consider the following,

Go = Base form/infinitive
go = simple tense form
goes = 3rd person singular form
going = present participle
went = past tense from
gone = past participle form

Every main verb in English language has the above six forms.

Re: What is the form of ''be''? Is it Pres tense form, Past tense form, or

Jackson6612 — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 23:34:15 GMT

I think names for those six forms of certain verb are:

Infinitive form, Simple Present Tense form, Simple Past Tense form, Past Participle, Present Participle.

For example:

to go, go, went, gone, going.

I don't know the name for sixth form? Perhaps it's bare infinitive. But there is no difference between Simple Present Tense form and bare Infinitive form of a certain verb. Is there any difference? Although Gerund and Present Participle also look same but there is difference in their use. Check this link http://www.kfmaas.de/presentparticiple.html to look the differnce in the use of Gerund and Present Participle. Likewise, perhaps there is also some difference in the use of bare Infinitive and Simple Present Tense form.