Talk:Preterite

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There's a lot of German on this page, I'm not so sure it belongs here. Maybe it would work better if it were suplemented with Spanish and French information also? I think then maybe we would exceed the scope of the article. It might be better if we leave the German/foreign language lesson to Wikibooks. I didn't really want to delete information or change anything without some input from other users. Any comments appreciated. --NitrogenX (Michael Hines) 04:38, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't see the Spanish there. So maybe some French would be acceptable if anyone knows a bit? --NitrogenX (Michael Hines) 04:49, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] forming the preterite in English

How do you form the preterite in English? Do you just add -ed on the end of the infinite for regular verbs? -- Creidieki 15:30, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, though if the infinitive already ends in -e, you don't add another one. Ruakh 21:46, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

So where's the section in the article explaining how the preterite tense works in English? (See pluperfect tense for an example.) After reading this article, I still have no idea what the preterite is or how to use it, which is the whole reason I looked it up. -- CWesling 02:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, I think the lead text is pretty clear in explaining that English's preterite is just its simple past tense: came, went, saw, etc. —Ruakh_TALK 05:07, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah. I thought "simple past" was a technical term meaning something different from just "past" tense. I'll see if I can clarify that a little. -- CWesling 01:59, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see how that could be confusing. Indeed, "past tense" is probably the most common term for English's preterite. —Ruakh_TALK 03:06, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Can you clarify then, is the "preterite tense" exactly the same as the "past perfect" aka "pluperfect" tenses? Thanks, Richard

No, not at all. —Ruakh_TALK 18:03, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

English, like many other languages, has several past tenses: the imperfect, or past continuous I was walking, the preterite I walked, the perfect (sometimes called present perfect) I have walked and the pluperfect, or past perfect I had walked. The regular form of the past participle is identical to the preterite, but they are different tenses: consider, in the same order of tenses, an irregular verb such as "to eat": I was eating, I ate, I have eaten, I had eaten. Kevin McE 23:03, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

You've mostly got the right idea, but you're really mixing terminologies. English has only one past tense, and it's called, straightforwardly enough, the "past tense". Additionally, English has four aspects — neutral (to do), perfect (to have done), continuous (to be doing), and perfect continuous (to have been doing). Verbs in the past tense, regardless of aspect, always include a preterite form: either the preterite of the main verb (did), or the preterite of an auxiliary verb (e.g. had done, was/were doing, had been doing).

(The term "preterite" does describe tenses in some other languages, because in some languages there are multiple past tenses, of which exactly one uses the preterite form, so it's natural to refer to that tense as the "preterite"; but that's not the case in English, and in discussing English we draw a fairly strict distinction between the preterite form and the past tense.)

—Ruakh_TALK 05:07, 8 March 2007 (UTC)