4 forms of verbs
go : goes ; going ; went ; gone / play : plays ; playing ; played ; played
English sentence structure :
TENSE MODAL PERFECT PROGRESSIVE VERB
1) Left to right order of components is fixed.
2)Each component influences the form of the component to its right.
English Language has 2 basic tenses : PRESENT and PAST
Then-now ; there-here ; that-this
Present : situation of the utterance is the same as the described situation.(fact)
Past : situation of the utterance is remote to the described situation. (Factual)
Future : non-factual/ uses modal verb ; relatively certain(factual)-will ; unlikely/impossible-would
“I love your Mercedes. You are standing too close to it. I wanted a car just like it. You were aiming too high. I will work for it. You will be working forever. I have worked hard before. You have been working for nothing. I had saved my money. You had been saving pennies. I will have saved enough. You will have been saving in vain.”
Aspect: (internal dimensions) if the situation is fixed or changing, moment or duration, complete or ongoing, perceived or experienced.
Lexical Aspect vs. Grammatical Aspect
Stative or Dynamic
Cognitive states(knowledge) know,understand;(emotions) hate,like;(relations) be,have.
Dynamic : durative (play, sing) vs. punctual (kick, hit)
Break,deserve,dislike,enlarge,prefer,rain,smash,wish;define their lexical aspect.
Grammatical Aspect (perspective) Experienced (from the inside) vs. Perceived (from outside, in retrospect)
If the situation/action is experienced the progressive aspect is the perspective of the speaker/writer; if the situation is perceived the perfective aspect is the perspective of the speaker/writer.
“ I am growing plants.” ( looks from inside, experiences it)
“Your plants have really grown.” (looks from outside, perceives it)
Complete or incomplete
“He is eating lunch.” Vs. “He has eaten lunch.”
Combining lexical and grammatical aspects : “I have been working very hard.”
”They had been swimming.”/“She has saved a fortune.”/”We’re strolling in the park.”
Background Vs. Foreground
“Drug resistance was mostly ignored in the U.S. until recently because physicians believed they had access to all antibiotics they might need. They were wrong. Drug resistance has been found in virtually every type of microbe that has been fought with antibiotics. That covers everything from food-borne pathogens such as Salmonella to sexually transmitted organisms such as Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Surgical patients are now dying in U.S. hospitals from wound infections caused by enterococcal bacteria resistant to several different drugs.”