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The past progressive or past continuous construction combines progressive aspect with past tense, and is formed using the past tense of be (was or were) with the present participle of the main verb. It indicates an action that was ongoing at the past time being considered: At three o'clock yesterday, I was working in the garden.
Grammatical abbreviations are generally written in full or small caps to visually distinguish them from the translations of lexical words. For instance, capital or small-cap PAST (frequently abbreviated to PST) glosses a grammatical past-tense morpheme, while lower-case 'past' would be a literal translation of a word with that meaning.
The simple past is used for describing single occurrences or habitual occurrences in the past, and sometimes for states existing in the past with no connection to the present (or where such connection is irrelevant), and sometimes for states and sensual perceptions existing in the past. The past progressive (past continuous) is formed using the ...
Imperfect meanings in English are expressed in different ways depending on whether the event is continuous or habitual.. For a continuous action (one that was in progress at a particular time in the past), the past progressive (past continuous) form is used, as in "I was eating"; "They were running fast."
Past continuous may refer to: Past continuous or past progressive, an English verb form (e.g. was writing) Verb forms with similar meaning in some other languages; see Imperfect; Past Continuous, a novel by Yaakov Shabtai; A Life Apart (novel), titled Past Continuous in its original release as a novel by Neel Mukherjee released in 2008
Thus present progressive (present continuous) constructions take forms like am writing, is writing, are writing, while the past progressive (past continuous, also called imperfect) forms are was writing, were writing. There is a progressive infinitive (to) be writing and a progressive subjunctive be writing.
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The progressive in English-based Atlantic Creoles often uses de (from English "be"). Jamaican Creole uses a (from English "are") or de for the present progressive and a combination of the past time marker (did, behn, ehn or wehn) and the progressive marker (a or de) for the past progressive (e.g. did a or wehn de).