By helping verbs, Past tenses

#1 John who took my pen is here. #2 John who is wearing my jacket is here. How firm a grasp would you like to obtain? (I know I shouldn't have written that, but I couldn't resist.) The thing that works for me is to take out the the subject and the "verb" and see if it still...

Lyangsuan wrote:When do we use "had" instead of "have"?Is the verb behind "had" a past tense or present tense?Example. Teenager who had finished their secondary education.Teenager who have finished their secondary education.Teenager who had finish their secondary education.Which one is correct?...

Could is the past tense of can. These two words are among the many that form a class of MAV modal auxiliary verbs called the ‘pure’modals. AV’s (Auxiliary verbs) are helping verbs that help the main verbs to convey additional information. MAV’s are a type of AV. MAV’s help to convey shades of...

Bamtori wrote:Thanks for your reply, Marius. With "last night" it is definately "had". Then how about leave out "last night" in the sentence. Which should I use, "we (have/had) some guys come in here and ransack the place."?When will this ransacking take place? Will it be in the future? From...

I must have been sleeptyping too, in my earlier comment about the lack of a past tense form with "must", since "must" is already a past tense form (of the obsolete "mote"). It's interesting that "I have got to" and "I must" both use past tense forms for a present tense meaning. At first, I...

I would take those as subjective. But there seem to be some complications with "had to". It's often presented as the "past tense" of "must", e.g. 1. "You must go directly to the headmaster's study and wait for me there." Later: "He said I had to go directly to the headmaster's study and wait...

Pemmican wrote:As far as I know, there are these 13 tenses: a) Past Perfect Progressive ........................had been + present participle b) Past Perfect ..........................................had + past participle c) Past Progressive ...................................was/were + present...

In former times, questions were built by a so called 'inversion', that means Subject and Verb of the actual sentence changed positions: Examples: You like tea. -----> Question: Like you tea? He likes tea. -----> Question: Likes he tea? This was possible as word order did not loom very large,...

I don't really understand the question either... Konstantin, you're referring to the Conditional with your German example. Indirect speech in German works differently as the Conjunctive has to be used in formal German, which however, can be replaced by the Conditional (would+infinitive). In...

It'd be "The show has been fun". Here, the Present Perfect is taught - so the simple past tense forms are changing to present perfect forms which consists of the helping verb "have /has" and the past participle, the 3rd form of the verb: I have worked, you have gone, he has written, she has...