Question by Forum member Justine Aragones (March 31, 2019):Should we need to use the past progressive tense in the following questions: “Were you not there when the check was presented to the receiving bank?” and “Did you not see what was handed to Mr. De Guzman at that time?” I think the past progressive tense should be applied in those questions.
Again, what are the rules in applying past progressive tense in sentence construction?
My reply to Justine Aragones: Right off I can confidently tell you that these two questions you presented are both grammatically airtight without need for the past progressive tense: (1) “Were you not there when the check was presented to the receiving bank?” and (2) “Did you not see what was handed to Mr. De Guzman at that time?”
The first question is, of course, an interrogative complex sentence with the simple past-tense main clause (“the check was presented to the receiving bank”) that’s linked to the interrogative clause (“were you not there?”) by the conjunction “when.” In the same token, 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?”). No matter how you look at both sentences, I’m afraid that you won’t find any grammatical, semantic, or structural flaw in them.
However, that's not to say nor to preclude the possibility of constructing those two sentences in the past progressive tense if (a) the action in each of the main clauses was, in fact, observed in progress as it was happening, and (b) you as the writer or speaker are inclined to relate it as observed in that progressive manner.
IMAGE CREDIT: AMERICANENGLISH.STATE.GOVIn that case, those two sentences can both be correctly and legitimately expressed in the past progressive tense that, as you know, is also known as the past continuous 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 see now what distinguishes the past progressive tense from the simple past tense:
the past progressive tense denotes continuing action or something that was happening, going on, at some point in the past, in contrast to
the simple past tense, which
denotes action completed or perfected in the past. The grammatical difference is that
the past progressive tense 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”.
IMAGE CREDIT: WRITINGEXPLAINED.ORG The two reconstructions above (1A and 1B) of the sentences you presented is one of four common uses of the past progressive tense, in their particular case denoting a limited duration of time (‘the check was being presented,” “what was being handed to Mr. De Guzman at that time”). It’s 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 tense 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 tense 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.
RELATED READING:A full-dress review of the kinds of verbs in English – II
