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If the verb in question does not use the progressive aspect, then the plain past perfect is used instead (see examples in the previous section). The past perfect progressive may also have additional specific uses similar to those of the plain past perfect; see § Conditional sentences, § Dependent clauses, § Expressions of wish, and ...
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
The progressive (or continuous) aspect is expressed with a form of be together with the present participle of the verb. 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.
Examples which combine both types of tense marking include the French passé composé, which has an auxiliary verb together with the inflected past participle form of the main verb; and the Irish past tense, where the proclitic do (in various surface forms) appears in conjunction with the affixed or ablaut-modified past tense form of the main verb.
English is an example of a language with no general imperfective. The English progressive is used to describe ongoing events, but can still be used in past tense, such as "The rain was beating down". Habitual situations do not have their own verb form (in most dialects), but the construction "used to" conveys past habitual action, as in I used ...
The continuous aspect is constructed by using a form of the copula, "to be", together with the present participle (marked with the suffix -ing). [6] It is generally used for actions that are occurring at the time in question, and does not focus on the larger time-scale. For example, the sentence "Andrew was playing tennis when Jane called him."
The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs sang, went and washed. Most languages have a past tense, with some having several types in order to indicate how far back the action took place.
A famous example for lexical ambiguity is the following sentence: "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher.", meaning "When flies fly behind flies, then flies fly in pursuit of flies." [40] [circular reference] It takes advantage of some German nouns and corresponding verbs being homonymous. While not noticeable ...