Take a moment to ponder whether these two questions are correctly using the simple past tense in their main clause: “Were you not there when the check was presented to the receiving bank?” “Did you not see what was handed to Mr. De Guzman at that time?” In a recent posting in the Forum, member Justine Aragones felt that they should have used the past progressive tense instead.
Right off, I told Justine that those two questions are both grammatically, semantically, and structurally airtight without need for the past progressive tense. The first question is an interrogative complex sentence with the simple past-tense main clause (“the check was presented to the receiving bank”) linked to the interrogative clause (“were you not there?”) by the conjunction “when.” The second question is likewise an interrogative complex sentence with the main clause (“what was handed to Mr. De Guzman at that time’) linked to the interrogative clause “did you not see?”).
IMAGE CREDIT: AMERICANENGLISH.STATE.GOVThis isn’t to say though—nor to preclude the possibility—that those two sentences can’t be constructed in the past progressive tense at all. We actually can under these two situations: (A) the action in each of the main clauses was observed in progress as it was happening, and (B) you as the writer or speaker are inclined to relate it in that progressive manner as observed. Then those two sentences can both be legitimately expressed in the past progressive tense, as follows:
(1A) “Were you not there
when the check was being presented to the receiving bank?”
(1B) “Did you not see
what was being handed to Mr. De Guzman at that time?”
We can clearly see now the distinction between the past progressive tense and the simple past tense:
the past progressive denotes continuing action or something that was happening, going on, at some point in the past, in contrast to
the simple past, which denotes action completed or perfected in the past. The difference is that the past progressive is formed with the simple past tense of the helping verb “be”—“was” for a singular subject, and “were” for a plural subject—plus the present participle of the verb (a verb ending with “–ing”).
The two reconstructions above of the sentences you presented is one of four common uses of the past progressive tense: to denote a limited duration of time (‘the check was being presented,” “what was being handed to Mr. De Guzman at that time”). It is a very handy way of conveying the idea that something took place (or didn’t take place) in the simple past (“were you not there?”, “did you not see?”) while something else was happening or in progress.
A second use of the past progressive is to denote an incomplete or unfinished action: “I
was depositing the funds at the bank when an armed man announced a holdup.”
A third use of the past progressive is to indirectly rebuke someone for an undesirable or unpleasant habitual action: “The heavy-spending homemates
were always paying their electric bills late.”
And a fourth use is to denote two actions happening at the same time but the actions are independent and don’t influence each other, as in “
The newlyweds were starting to tour Japan while
the bride's parents were winding up their tour of Spain.”
Keep in mind though that the past progressive form, as with all the other forms of the progressive tense, work only with dynamic verbs and not with stative verbs. Recall that a
dynamic verb describes actions like “eat,” “learn,” or “talk” that expresses a state or condition rather than an activity, while a
stative verb describes a state like “love,” “hate,” or “doubt” that denotes a condition rather than an activity or event.
(Next:
Random questions that need a lot of explaining to answer) May 9, 2019
This essay, 1,142nd of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the May 2, 2019 print edition of The Manila Times
, © 2019 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
It originally appeared in a slightly different form in the Forum’s You Asked Me This Question section on April 3, 2019.
