Page 59 - English Grammar - 3

Tenses

Present Past Future

Today, Bunty is in Yesterday, Bunty was Tomorrow, Bunty will

the market with his in the swimming pool be at a birthday party

mother and sister. with his father. with his friends.

There are three main tenses—Present, Past and Future.

Compare the following sentences.

Present (today) Past (yesterday) Future (tomorrow)

Kapil eats fruits. Kapil ate fruits. Kapil will eat fruits.

Suman sings a song. Suman sang a song. Suman will sing a song.

In these examples, we point out the relation between a sentence structure
and the aspect of time. But every sentence also has another important

aspect, i.e., the aspect state of things and accordingly a tense is used in the

sentence.

Kinds of Tenses

1. Simple Tense

2. Continuous (also called Progressive) Tense

3. Perfect Tense Tenses

4. Perfect Continuous Tense

Tense and verb go together in a sentence. They are always inter-connected
and involve two aspects—time and state of the subject. All the four types of

tenses have past, present and future forms.
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