Talk:Past tense/Archive 1

Archive 1

Dutch

I'm a speaker of Dutch and I was surprised to read about two tenses I had never heard about before. Convoluted verlaine tied and Voltaire coordinated tied are two tenses not only unknown to me, the names of the tenses are not even Dutch words. Nor are the examples you give. Registered was i dear should be Gisteren was ik daar and better Ik ben daar gisteren geweest.

In Dutch the Onvoltooid Verleden Tijd (O.V.T.) (~simple past) is used to express an event prior to the moment of speaking, but without emphasis on whether the event is completely over or not. It is often used with time adverbials expressing frequency or duration (all day long; when I was younger I went fishing once a week.). The Voltooid Verleden Tijd (V.V.T.) (~present perfect) is used in the same grammatical context (to express an event prior to the moment of speaking), but here the emphasis lies on the event being completed or completed and with present consequences. it is often used with time adverbials expressing a time when something happened (yesterday, ...). Note that the present perfect can't be used with time adverbials like yesterday, but the V.V.T. can. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.241.37.197 (talk) 18:51, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Irregular and dynamic/static

The article should mention the phenomenon of irregular verbs and should make a distinction between dynamic and static verbs when describing the different functions. Otherwise, nice overview. --Sinatra 14:41, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

English only

Even if this is English only, there are paragraphs at Imperfect tense#English and Pluperfect#Examples from various languages suggesting this may be incomplete, and even is this article is based on an "English only has two/three tenses" POV it should have pointers to other approaches. It is seriously lacking when considering past tenses in other languages. --Henrygb 18:11, 22 February 2007 (UTC)