Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
An English irregular verb’s simple past tense form is typically distinct from its past participle (with which the auxiliary to have constructs the past perfect), as in went vs. have gone (of to go), despite them being the same for regular verbs, as in demanded vs. have demanded (of to demand).
The verbs have, do and say also have irregular third-person present tense forms (has, does /dʌz/, says /sɛz/). The verb be has the largest number of irregular forms (am, is, are in the present tense, was, were in the past tense, been for the past participle).
It answers the question: "Why has this been said?" The five basic sentence forms (or "structures") in English are the declarative , interrogative , exclamative , imperative and the optative . These correspond to the discourse functions statement , question , exclamation , and command respectively.
Colloquial AmE informally uses got as a finite verb for these meanings—for example, I got two cars, I got to go. In conditional sentences if clauses, US spoken usage often substitutes in the subordinate clause would and would have (usually shortened to [I]'d and would've) for the simple past and for the pluperfect (If you'd leave now, you'd ...
The conditional perfect is a grammatical construction that combines the conditional mood with perfect aspect.A typical example is the English would have written. [1] The conditional perfect is used to refer to a hypothetical, usually counterfactual, event or circumstance placed in the past, contingent on some other circumstance (again normally counterfactual, and also usually placed in the past).
The development of ain't for the various forms of be, have, will and do occurred independently, at different times. The use of ain't for the forms of be was established by the mid-18th century and for the forms of have by the early 19th century. The use of ain't is a continuing subject of controversy in English.
Wuvulu-Aua does not have an explicit tense, but rather tense is conveyed by mood, aspect markers, and time phrases. Wuvulu speakers use a realis mood to convey past tense as speakers can be certain about events that have occurred. [32]: 89 In some cases, realis mood is used to convey present tense — often to indicate a state of being. Wuvulu ...
English tag questions, when they have the grammatical form of a question, are atypically complex, because they vary according to at least three factors: the choice of auxiliary, the negation and the intonation pattern. This is unique among the Germanic languages, but the Celtic languages operate in a very similar way.