Tenses

The twelve English tenses make a table three by four, but the table alone does not tell you which of the twelve forms a particular sentence needs. The sentence chooses, and what follows are items where you can see what it chooses with.

In Language in Use this choice turns up in three tasks. In the multiple-choice cloze you pick the form from the options under the gap. In the open cloze a whole form does not fit into one word, so you write part of it: the auxiliary, that is a helper word such as has, was or will in front of the main verb, or a word that names time. In editing a tense breaks by carrying one auxiliary too many, and that case has a section of its own near the end.

The words outside the gap decide the form

Start with one gap. All four forms exist, and all four belong to the same verb.

Notice where the decision sat. Not in the verb test and not in the meaning of the sentence, but in four words standing outside the gap. Swap for eleven years now for last year and the same phrase demands tested, though the verb, the meaning and the word order have not moved. The gap was decided by something that is not in it.

The rule and the table

Some English words name a time by themselves, before you have even looked at the verb. Since, for, ago, already, by the time, last year are ready-made instructions. When such a word is in the sentence, it decides the form, provided it belongs to the verb in the gap, and the meaning of the verb never comes into it. But a marker works together with the moment the story is told from. About today, already gives has already left; in a story about the past it gives had already left; and never about a stretch of time that is already closed takes the past simple: My great-grandmother never learned to read.

When there is no such word, the tense is taken from the neighbouring verb in the same sentence, or from the sentences before it in the paragraph. And separate from the question of when there is a second one: whether the speaker treats the action as closed, as running, or as connected to now. Three sources, and all three are in the table alongside.

Test the first source where you have to write the word in yourself. In the open cloze exactly one word goes in the gap.

Not one of the three gaps held a main verb. Twice what went in was an auxiliary, has and will, and both times a time marker demanded it, since and by the time. The third time it was the marker itself, ago.

The three verb forms: where the third form comes from, the one half this table demands

Two gaps that do not close that way

With a ready-made marker a gap closes in a second. The next two also have a word about time in them, and still that is not what they turn on.

A time marker is tied to its own verb, not to the sentence as a whole. When a relative clause stands between the subject and the gap, like who checks the pumps every morning, the marker inside it belongs to the verb of that clause and does not count for the gap. The next item is longer: each gap has two more sentences in front of it.

The words that sounded most like a hint, every sack in the first paragraph and anyone in the second, said nothing about time: they are subjects, and a subject does not set a tense. every morning in the second paragraph is different: it is an adverbial attached to the gap itself, and like the every day row of the table it pulls towards the present simple. The answer came from the verb the gap depends on and from the paragraph around it. Hence the order of work: a word that names time, then the neighbouring verb, then the sentences before; a word that only sounds general is not on the list.

One time, two different views

So far the question has been when. The next gap does not turn on that: the time is obvious, and still only one of the four forms fits.

This is the second thing an English verb form fixes, and it is the one that has no word of its own. has lost means: it happened earlier, and the result shows now. So the choice between lost and has lost is made by the rest of the sentence, and the question goes to the sentence, not to the verb: does anything here depend on the result today? If yes, the perfect. If the sentence has moved on, the simple past. That is why lost and has lost translate identically into most languages and are still not interchangeable. The plain lost would not be wrong English in this sentence, and American speakers often use it; it simply tells the breakdown as a closed story, while the sentence is about the cold hall now.

Both sentences have when, and both times it did not choose the form by itself. The couriers were waiting before the storm and went on waiting when it hit: were waiting. The film was already running when we arrived, so it had begun earlier: had started. In both cases the choice was made by how the action stands to the second event, whether it is under way during it or happened before it.

Tenses in editing: one auxiliary too many

Editing cannot ask you for a missing form; it can only add a word. So a tense breaks there in one way: an auxiliary that the tense does not have. Check each line against the table: a past time word takes the past simple, a perfect has exactly one have, and been follows a form of have, never a bare is or was.

Three more lines, checked the same way: first find the verb that carries the tense, then ask whether it needs each auxiliary beside it.

In both broken lines the verb already had its tense: plan in the present, decided in the past. A verb with its own tense needs no form of be beside it, so a was or is between that verb and to belongs to nothing. A form of be belongs in a line only when no other word in it is the tensed verb: in their plan is to repaint, plan is a noun and is is the verb.

What to take with you

Three tasks where this pays:

Open cloze: where the auxiliary itself or a word about time goes in the gap Multiple-choice cloze: where the form is picked from the options under the gap Editing: where one auxiliary too many is the extra word

And the neighbouring topic that builds its forms on the same ladder:

The passive: the tense sits in be, and the third form does not change