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Regular in past tense and sometimes in past participle. must – (no other forms) Defective: Originally a preterite; see English modal verbs: need (needs/need) – needed – needed: Weak: Regular except in the use of need in place of needs in some contexts, by analogy with can, must, etc; [4] see English modal verbs: ought – (no other forms ...
For example, bore and found may be past tenses of bear and find, but may also represent independent (regular) verbs of different meaning. Another example is lay, which may be the past tense of lie, but is also an independent verb (regular in pronunciation, but with irregular spelling: lay–laid–laid).
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.
The absolute/conjunct distinction is retained in the habitual present tense (also used as, and often referred to as, the future tense) of regular and many irregular verbs. In these cases, the independent form of the verb ends in -(a)idh (cf. Old Irish gaibid above), while the dependent form drops this ending (cf. Old Irish ·gaib above).
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:
For the past 15 years, Jansen and Craig Kimbrel have ascended the all-time saves list together, with Jansen currently at 447 and Kimbrel close behind at 440, good for fourth and fifth place in MLB ...
An example of past imperfect tense in English which is often said to have a discontinuous meaning is the English past tense with "used to": I used to live in London. This tense normally carries an implication that the speaker no longer lives in London, although, as Comrie points out, [11] this implication is not absolute. For example, the ...
Over the past two years, staff at 10 of REI’s 187 stores have unionized. Employees have chafed not only at cutbacks but at what they see as changes in REI’s culture.