Aspects of the Past Tense

What are the aspects of the past tense?

The past tense can be combined with four traditional aspects to form structures known as past simple, past continuous (or past progressive), past perfect, and past perfect continuous. These structures are often taught as individual “tenses,” but they are actually a combination of past tense and aspect. While the tense indicates when the action occurred in relation to the present (in the past), the aspect describes how the event took place in time.

Past Simple

The past simple structure is used to express actions and events that were completed at a given moment in the past. Whether the occurrence is of short or long duration, the simple aspect emphasizes its completion. The past simple is formed by adding “-d” or “-ed” to the end of regular verbs, but the past form of irregular verbs must be memorized. For example:

• “They lived next door to us for years.” (regular)
• “I locked myself out of the house this morning.” (regular)
• “We went to a private school when we were young.” (irregular)

Past Continuous

The past continuous is the combination of the past tense with the continuous aspect. It emphasizes the progress of an action that occurred in the past, rather than its completion. It is often used for actions that are interrupted by other actions, and it is formed using the past form of the verb be (was/were) + the present participle. For example:

• “They were playing outside when their father arrived.”
• “I’m sorry I didn’t answer the phone; I was driving when you called.”
• “We were eating dinner when my in-laws told us the good news.”

The past continuous usually occurs only with action verbs, not with stative verbs. For instance, we cannot say “I was knowing John many years” or “She was seeming sad.”

Past Perfect

The past perfect is a combination of the past tense and the perfect aspect. It is used to describe actions or states that began and finished before another event in the past occurred. It is formed using had + the past participle. For example:

• “She had already eaten when she arrived.”
• “We had seen the movie, but we watched it again.”
• “I’d had a bad cold that week, but I went on my vacation anyway.”

Past Perfect Continuous

The past perfect continuous is a combination of the continuous, perfect aspect, and the past tense. It is used for actions that were in progress before another past event. The main difference between it and the past perfect structure is that the past perfect continuous emphasizes the progress of the action, rather than its completion, and it also highlights the effect of that action on another moment in the past. Like the past continuous, it’s generally used with action verbs but not stative verbs. It is formed using had + been + the present participle. For example:

• “We had been waiting for a long time when the bus finally came.”
• “My little sister had been sitting very quietly, but then she started to cry.”
• “I’d been cleaning all day, so I was too tired to go out last night.”