Description

Tense shows the time of a verb's action or being. There arethreeinflected forms reflected by changes in the endings of verbs.Thepresent tense indicates that something is happening or beingnow:"She is a student. She drives a new car." The simple pasttenseindicates that something happened in the past: "She was astudent.She drove a new car." And the past participle form iscombined withauxiliary verbs to indicate that something happened inthe pastprior to another action: "She has been a student. She haddriven anew car." Unlike most other languages, English does nothaveinflected forms for the future tense. Instead, English futureformsare created with the use of auxiliaries: "She will be astudent.She is going to drive a new car." English can even createthefuture by using the present tense, "The bus arrives laterthisafternoon," or the present progressive, "He is relocatingtoPortland later next month."