Verbs: Tenses

Verbs: Tenses

Tense and Time
Tenses and time are closely related. Verbs change form to indicate present or past time. (To indicate future time, English uses the modal auxiliary verb will as well as expressions like be going to.) Closely related to tense is the way we view an action with regard to time (called the aspect of a verb). For each time (present, past, and future), auxiliary verbs are used with the main verb to convey completed actions (perfect forms), actions in progress (progressive forms), and actions that are completed by some specified time or event and that emphasize the length of time in progress (perfect progressive forms).

The following examples illustrate aspects of active voice verbs referring to past, present, and future time.

	Past Time	Example
	Simple Past	They arrived yesterday.
	Past Progressive	They were leaving when the phone rang.
	Past Perfect	Everyone had left when I called.
	Past Perfect Progressive	We had been sleeping for an hour before you arrived.

	Present Time	Example
	Simple Present	He eats Wheaties every morning.
	Present Progressive	They are working today.
	Present Perfect	She has never read Melville.
	Present Perfect Progressive	He has been living here for five years.

	Future Time (using will)	Example
	Simple Future	She will arrive soon.
	Future Progressive	They will be playing baseball at noon tomorrow.
	Future Perfect	He will have finished the project by Friday.
	Future Perfect Progressive	By the year 2004, they will have been running the company for twenty-five years.

Other modal verbs can substitute for will and thus change the meaning: must arrive, might be playing, may have finished, should have been running.

Verbs Not Used in Progressive Forms

Use simple tenses but not progressive forms with intransitive verbs expressing mental activity referring to the senses, preference, or thought, as well as with verbs of possession, appearance, and inclusion (for example, smell, prefer, understand, own, seem, contain).

Examples

They possess different behavior patterns.

I smell a rat.

See also
Sentence Problems: Verbs