past tense

The past tense is a verb tense expressing action, activity, state or being in the past of the current moment (in an absolute tense system), or prior to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future (in a relative tense system).

In English, there are two distinct types of past tense:

1. Preterite (or simple past)
2. Present perfect (see perfect aspect)

Each of these may also be found in the progressive (continuous) aspect.

Other Germanic languages

German

German uses two forms for the past tense.

• The preteri (Präteritum) (called the "imperfect" in older grammar books, but this, a borrowing from Latin terminology.)
• The perfect (Perfekt)

In South Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the preterite is mostly used solely in writing, for example in stories. Use in speech is regarded as snobbish and thus very uncommon. South German dialects, such as the Bavarian dialect, as well as Yiddish, and Swiss German have no preterite, but only perfect constructs.

In certain regions, a few specific verbs are used in the preterite, for instance the modal verbs and the verbs haben (have) and sein (be).

• Es gab einmal ein kleines Mädchen, das Rotkäppchen hieß. (There was once a small girl who was called Little Red Riding Hood.)

In speech and informal writing, the Perfekt is used (eg, Ich habe dies und das gesagt. (I said this and that)).

However, in the colloquial language of North Germany, there is still a very important difference between the preterite and the perfect, and both tenses are consequently very common. The preterite is used for past actions when the focus is on the action, whilst the present perfect is used for past actions when the focus is on the present state of the subject as a result of a previous action. This is somewhat similar to the English usage of the preterite and the present perfect.

• Preterite: "Heute früh kam mein Freund." (my friend came early in the morning, and he is being talked about strictly in the past)
• Perfect: "Heute früh ist mein Freund gekommen." (my friend came early in the morning, but he is being talked about in the present)

Dutch

Dutch also has 2 main past tenses:

• onvoltooid verleden tijd, which matches the English simple past and the German preterite, for example: Gisteren was ik daar ("I was there yesterday").
• voltooid tegenwoordige tijd, a present tense with the meaning of perfect. This form is made by combining a form of zijn ("to be") or hebben ("to have") with the notional verb, for example: Gisteren ben ik daar geweest. This also means "I was there yesterday", but just as it is the case for English constructions with the present perfect simple, this kind of formulation puts more emphasis on the "being finished"-aspect.

==Other Indo-European languages== In non-Germanic Indo-European languages, past marking is typically combined with a distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect, with the former reserved for single completed actions in the past. French for instance, has an imperfect tense of similar form to that of German but used only for past habitual contexts like "I used to...". Similar patterns extend across most languages of the Indo-European family right through to the Indic languages.

Unlike other Indo-European languages, in Slavic languages tense is independent of aspect, with imperfective and perfective aspects being indicated instead by means of prefixes, stem changes, or suppletion. In many West Slavic and East Slavic languages, the early Slavic past tenses have largely merged into a single past tense. In West Slavic, person is indicated by conjugation of an auxiliary verb (employing the verb 'to be'). In Polish this auxiliary has evolved into a clitic which may attach to the main verb or alternatively to other parts of the sentence such as pronouns or conjunctions. Languages using either an auxiliary verb or clitic often drop the pronoun as it is not necessary to indicate person. By contrast, East Slavic languages have dropped the auxiliary completely and indicate person by means of obligatory pronouns. In both West and East Slavic, verbs in the past tense are conjugated for gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and number (singular, plural).

African languages

Whilst in Semitic languages tripartite non-past/past imperfective/past perfective systems similar to those of most Indo-European languages are found, in the rest of Africa past tenses have very different forms from those found in European languages. Berber languages have only the perfective/imperfective distinction and lack a past imperfect.

Many non-Bantu Niger-Congo languages of West Africa do not mark past tense at all and only have a form of perfect tense derived from a word meaning "to finish". Others, such as Ewe, distinguish only between future and non-future, comprising both present and past time frames.

In complete contrast, Bantu languages such as Zulu have not only a past tense, but also a less remote proximal tense which is used for very recent past events and is never interchangeable with the ordinary past form. These languages also differ substantially from European languages in coding tense with prefixes instead of such suffixes as English -ed.

Other, smaller language families of Africa follow quite regional patterns. Thus the Sudanic languages of East Africa and adjacent Afro-Asiatic families are past of the same area with inflectional past-marking that extends into Europe, whereas more westerly Nilo-Saharan languages often do not have past

Asian languages

Past tenses in the sense used within European languages are found within the vast Asian landmass only among the Dravidian languages and languages of the northern half, such as the Uralic, Mongolic, as well as Filipino language and Korean. Languages in southeast Asia typically do not distinguish past tenses, though in some cases special particles are used to indicate completion of an event (such as Chinese le).

In parts of islands in South East Asia, even less distinction is made, for instance in Indonesian and some other Austronesian languages. Past tenses, do, however, exist in most Oceanic languages.

Other language families

Among Native American languages there is a split between complete absence of past marking (especially common in Mesoamerica and the Pacific Northwest) and very complex tense marking with numerous specialised remoteness distinctions, as found for instance in Athabaskan languages and a few languages of the Amazon Basin. Some of these tense can have specialised mythological significance and use.

A number of Native American languages like Northern Paiute stand in contrast to European notions of tense because they always use relative tense, which means tense relative to a reference point other than the time an utterance is made.

Papuan languages of New Guinea almost always have remoteness distinctions in the past tense (though none are as elaborate as some native American languages), whilst indigenous Australian languages usually have a single past tense without remoteness distinctions.

External links

• 4 Past Tenses Explained + Exercises