Grammar of a language is composed of many components that’s together are responsible for the formation of that language. Likewise, English grammar is also a very vast and diverse term which consists of various components and parts that all make up the language. Among all these grammatical components, one that is most important is tense.
In today’s article, I will discuss about grammatical tense, what it means and how it occurs in a sentence with the help of various examples.
Tense
Tense is described as the quality of a verb which occurs in a sentence and which describes the time frame of the action taking place. In simpler terms, the occurrence of action of a sentence is depicted by the tense of that sentence.
Example:
He likes bananas.
In the above example, the verb likes indicates that the action is taking place right now and is not an event of the past or future, thus we know that the tense of this sentence is present.
The basic categorization of tense is that it can exist in three forms which are past, present and future. This means that a verb also comes in three forms i.e. past, present and future.
Past
A verb is said to be in past tense when the action it is describing has already taken place and is an event of the past.
Example:
She sang well.
The above simple sentence demonstrates that the action of singing song had taken place at some point in the past so the second form of verb sang is used.
Present
A verb is said to be in present tense when the action it is describing is taking place right now or in the present.
Example:
She sings well.
This example makes use of first form of verb i.e. sings and thus it indicates that the action is of present.
Future
A verb is said to be in future tense when the action it describes in a sentence has not happened yet but is predicted to happen at some point in the near or far off future.
Example:
She will sing well at the party.
The above sentence indicates that the action of singing has not yet taken place but will take place in the future and thus will is used to indicate the future tense.
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