Talk:Past tense

Dutch
I'm a speaker of Dutch and I was surprised to read about two tenses I had never heard about before. Convoluted verlaine tied and Voltaire coordinated tied are two tenses not only unknown to me, the names of the tenses are not even Dutch words. Nor are the examples you give. Registered was i dear should be Gisteren was ik daar and better Ik ben daar gisteren geweest.

In Dutch the Onvoltooid Verleden Tijd (O.V.T.) (~simple past) is used to express an event prior to the moment of speaking, but without emphasis on whether the event is completely over or not. It is often used with time adverbials expressing frequency or duration (all day long; when I was younger I went fishing once a week.). The Voltooid Verleden Tijd (V.V.T.) (~present perfect) is used in the same grammatical context (to express an event prior to the moment of speaking), but here the emphasis lies on the event being completed or completed and with present consequences. it is often used with time adverbials expressing a time when something happened (yesterday, ...). Note that the present perfect can't be used with time adverbials like yesterday, but the V.V.T. can. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.241.37.197 (talk) 18:51, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Irregular and dynamic/static
The article should mention the phenomenon of irregular verbs and should make a distinction between dynamic and static verbs when describing the different functions. Otherwise, nice overview. --Sinatra 14:41, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

"Secluded"?
From the article: "Simple past is used for describing acts that have already been secluded"

I'm not familiar with any meaning of "secluded" that would make sense in the above sentence. Is "secluded" a technical term, or is its use in the above sentence a mistake? --72.78.101.61 22:29, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, the word I wanted was "concluded". Changes have already been made. Thanks!

English only
Even if this is English only, there are paragraphs at Imperfect tense and Pluperfect suggesting this may be incomplete, and even is this article is based on an "English only has two/three tenses" POV it should have pointers to other approaches. It is seriously lacking when considering past tenses in other languages. --Henrygb 18:11, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Used to
I don't know what to call this form, but what about "Used to" in English (I used to do that) This is a past tense that emphasises that it is not true in the present, and usually not true in the future also. This is a legitimate since there is no possible literal meaning to this phrase.

He would do this, he would do that
I have been editing the article on Charles Ives but certain passages of the article use a tense that I'm not sure what to call. Maybe a past progessive tense-but instead of 'was' it uses 'would' Here is a quote :

"Starting around 1910 Ives would begin composing his most accomplished works including the "Holidays Symphony" and arguably his best-known piece "Three Places in New England". Ives' mature works of this era would eventually compare with the two other great musical innovators at the time (Schoenberg and Stravinsky) making the case that Ives was the 3rd great innovator of early 20th century composition. Arnold Schoenberg himself would compose a brief poem near the end of his life honoring Ives."

I think the tense used in the Ive's article makes the article more wordy than neccesary but I am curious to know what it is as it doesn't seem to be mentioned here. Anybody know? --Godfinger 21:59, 21 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I came here to ask precisely the same sort of question. This edit was described as changing passive voice to active, but it has nothing to do with voice.  It's just changing "she would play" etc to "she played".  What's the "would play" version of the past tense called?  --  JackofOz (talk) 21:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

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it,s not informative

Godfinger: I'm not sure how to communicate here on Wikipedia, so I'm just editing this talk section in hope you'll notice it. I came to the "past tense" article to see if there's any mention of a phenomenon I've been noticing lately, and your section here on the Charles Ives article is the closest thing I've found. It seems to me that the past tense is being avoided in television documentaries, in an effort to make them more engaging. Narrators will say things like, "Einstein will spend the next several years pondering gravity's role in relativity, but it will take a head-on confrontation with one of the great mathematical minds of the twentieth century, David Hilbert, to break the mental logjam that leads to his greatest scientific work, the Theory of General Relativity..." Have you noticed it? That's not a direct quote, but it's representative of the kind of language I've been hearing on History Channel documentaries for a while now. They avoid the past tense and play up conflict, I believe in an effort to engage a wider audience. It's as if they're trying to be exciting, to "take the audience there," instead of just talking about something that happened in the past (boring!). So how does this relate to the Charles Ives article... the editor used the phrase "starting around 1910" instead of the clearer/simpler "in 1910," per subliminal suggestion from the TV they've been watching. They go on, "would begin composing" and "would eventually compare" instead of "began composing" and "were eventually compared" for the same reason. Personally, I don't like to see it. It needlessly muddies the water and makes things more difficult to understand. Okay, stepping down from soapbox. Cellodont (talk) 13:51, 17 May 2017 (UTC)cellodont

Misleading description of German preterite?
The article currently uses "kam" as an example of the use of the preterite with focus on the action (as opposed to the resulting present state). This is a specific feature of "kommen" and a few other verbs with short (mono-syllabic?) irregular preterite forms (e.g "stand" is also in common use), but "normal" verbs can't be used like this in speech, e.g. "Ich hab(e) heute morgen Getränke geholt", and not "*Ich holte heute morgen Getränke", even when focussing on the action. I'm a bit wary of changing this because the article makes a lot of regional distinctions, but I think I would have noticed by now if some people in Germany spoke like this :-) (See also Preterite) Joriki (talk) 14:31, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

English
This paragraph makes no sense: "The Past Future Perfect Continuous tenses is used express based on these events : would, have, still going in the future, and the past" Harry Audus (talk) 00:40, 5 May 2016 (UTC)