Past

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A picture of a basketball bouncing, composed of frames taken at different points in the past Bouncing ball strobe edit.jpg
A picture of a basketball bouncing, composed of frames taken at different points in the past

The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. [1] The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience time, and is accessed through memory and recollection. In addition, human beings have recorded the past since the advent of written language. [2] The first known use of the word "past" was in the fourteenth century; it developed as the past participle of the Middle English verb passen meaning "to pass." [3]

Contents

Grammar

Thoughts of the Past (John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, 1859) John Roddam Spencer Stanhope - Thoughts of the Past - Google Art Project.jpg
Thoughts of the Past (John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, 1859)

In English grammar, actions are classified according to one of the following twelve verb tenses: past (past, uses of English verb forms, past perfect, or past perfect continuous), present (present, present continuous, present perfect, or present perfect continuous), or future (future, future continuous, future perfect, or future perfect continuous). [4] The past tense refers to actions that have already happened. For example, "she is walking" refers to a girl who is currently walking (present tense), while "she walked" refers to a girl who was walking before now (past tense).

The past continuous tense refers to actions that continued for a period of time, as in the sentence "she was walking," which describes an action that was still happening in a prior window of time to which a speaker is presently referring. The past perfect tense is used to describe actions that were already completed by a specific point in the past. For example, "she had walked" describes an action that took place in the past and was also completed in the past.

The past perfects continuous tense refers to an action that was happening up until a particular point in the past but was completed. [4] It is different from the past perfect tense because the emphasis of past perfect continuous verbs is not on the action having been completed by the present moment, but rather on its having taken place actively over a time period before another moment in the past. The verb tense used in the sentence "She had been walking in the park regularly before I met her" is past perfect continuous because it describes an action ("walking") that was actively happening before a time when something else in the past was happening (when "I met her").

Depending on its usage in a sentence, "past" can be described using a variety of terms. Synonyms for "past" as an adjective include, "former," "bygone," "earlier," "preceding," and "previous." Synonyms for "past" as a noun include, "history, "background," "life story," and "biography." Synonyms of "past" as a preposition include, "in front of," "beyond," "by," and "in excess of." [5]

Other uses

The word "past" can also be used to describe the offices of those who have previously served in an organization, group, or event such as, "past president," or, "past champions." [6] "Past" can also refer to something or someone being at or in a position that is further than a particular point. [7] For instance, in the sentence, "I live on Fielding Road, just past the train station," the word "past" is used to describe a location (the speaker's residence) beyond a certain point (the train station). Alternatively, the sentence, "He ran past us at full speed," utilizes the concept of the past to describe the position of someone ("He") that is further than the speaker.

The "past" is also used to define a time that is a certain number of minute before or after a particular hour, as in "We left the party at half-past twelve." [8] [6] People also use "past" to refer to being beyond a particular biological age or phase of being, as in, "The boy was past the age of needing a babysitter," or, "I'm past caring about that problem." [6] The "past" is commonly used to refer to history, either generally or with regards to specific time periods or events, as in, "Past monarchs had absolute power to determine the law in contrast to many European Kings and Queens of today."

Nineteenth-century British author Charles Dickens [9] created one of the best-known fictional personifications of the "past" in his short book, "A Christmas Carol." In the story, the Ghost of Christmas Past is an apparition that shows the main character, a cold-hearted and tight-fisted man named Ebenezer Scrooge, vignettes from his childhood and early adult life to teach him that joy does not necessarily come from wealth. [10]

Fields of study

The past is the object of study within such fields as time, life, history, nostalgia, archaeology, archaeoastronomy, chronology, geology, historical geology, historical linguistics, ontology, paleontology, paleobotany, paleoethnobotany, palaeogeography, paleoclimatology, etymology and physical cosmology.

See also

Related Research Articles

In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns.

In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how a verbal action, event, or state, extends over time. For instance, perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference to any flow of time during the event. Imperfective aspect is used for situations conceived as existing continuously or habitually as time flows.

A verb is part of speech that in syntax generally conveys an action, an occurrence, or a state of being. In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected to encode tense, aspect, mood, and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object. In English, three tenses exist: present, to indicate that an action is being carried out; past, to indicate that an action has been done; future, to indicate that an action will be done, expressed with the auxiliary verb will or shall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Future</span> Time after the present

The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently exists and will exist can be categorized as either permanent, meaning that it will exist forever, or temporary, meaning that it will end. In the Occidental view, which uses a linear conception of time, the future is the portion of the projected timeline that is anticipated to occur. In special relativity, the future is considered absolute future, or the future light cone.

In linguistics, a participle is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, participle has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adjective, as in a laughing face".

In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French aimera, meaning "will love", derived from the verb aimer. The "future" expressed by the future tense usually means the future relative to the moment of speaking, although in contexts where relative tense is used it may mean the future relative to some other point in time under consideration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English verbs</span> Verbs in the English language

Verbs constitute one of the main parts of speech in the English language. Like other types of words in the language, English verbs are not heavily inflected. Most combinations of tense, aspect, mood and voice are expressed periphrastically, using constructions with auxiliary verbs.

The present tense is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present tense, it is useful to imagine time as a line on which the past tense, the present and the future tense are positioned. The term present tense is usually used in descriptions of specific languages to refer to a particular grammatical form or set of forms; these may have a variety of uses, not all of which will necessarily refer to present time. For example, in the English sentence "My train leaves tomorrow morning", the verb form leaves is said to be in the present tense, even though in this particular context it refers to an event in future time. Similarly, in the historical present, the present tense is used to narrate events that occurred in the past.

The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs sang, went and washed. Most languages have a past tense, with some having several types in order to indicate how far back the action took place. Some languages have a compound past tense which uses auxiliary verbs as well as an imperfect tense which expresses continuous or repetitive events or actions. Some languages inflect the verb, which changes the ending to indicate the past tense, while non-inflected languages may use other words meaning, for example, "yesterday" or "last week" to indicate that something took place in the past.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spanish verbs</span> Verbs in the Spanish language

Spanish verbs form one of the more complex areas of Spanish grammar. Spanish is a relatively synthetic language with a moderate to high degree of inflection, which shows up mostly in Spanish conjugation.

The perfect tense or aspect is a verb form that indicates that an action or circumstance occurred earlier than the time under consideration, often focusing attention on the resulting state rather than on the occurrence itself. An example of a perfect construction is I have made dinner. Although this gives information about a prior action, the focus is likely to be on the present consequences of that action. The word perfect in this sense means "completed".

The continuous and progressive aspects are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action or state in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects.

The imperfect is a verb form that combines past tense and imperfective aspect. It can have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to walk". It contrasts with preterite forms, which refer to a single completed event in the past.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Present</span> Period of time occurring now

The present is the period of time that is occurring now. The present is contrasted with the past, the period of time that has already occurred, and the future, the period of time that has yet to occur.

The sequence of tenses is a set of grammatical rules of a particular language, governing the agreement between the tenses of verbs in related clauses or sentences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simple present</span> Verb form

The simple present, present simple or present indefinite is one of the verb forms associated with the present tense in modern English. It is commonly referred to as a tense, although it also encodes certain information about aspect in addition to the present time. The simple present is the most commonly used verb form in English, accounting for more than half of verbs in spoken English.

Bulgarian verbs are the most complicated part of Bulgarian grammar, especially when compared with other Slavic languages. Bulgarian verbs are inflected for person, number and sometimes gender. They also have lexical aspect, voice, nine tenses, three moods, four evidentials and six non-finite verbal forms. Because the subject of the verb can be inferred from the verb ending, it is often omitted. As there is no infinitive in contemporary Bulgarian, the basic form of a verb is its present simple tense first person singular form.

Somali is an agglutinative language, using many affixes and particles to determine and alter the meaning of words. As in other related Afroasiatic languages, Somali nouns are inflected for gender, number and case, while verbs are inflected for persons, number, tenses, and moods.

Tense–aspect–mood or tense–modality–aspect is an important group of grammatical categories, which are marked in different ways by different languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uses of English verb forms</span> Conjugation, finiteness and verb conversion in English grammar

Modern standard English has various verb forms, including:

References

  1. ↑ "past" (web article). Dictionary.com. Archived from the original on 26 June 2018. Retrieved 25 June 2018.
  2. ↑ Christian, David. "Record Keeping and History: How We Chronicle the Past" (web article). www.khanacademy.org. Khan Academy. Archived from the original on 26 June 2018. Retrieved 25 June 2018.
  3. ↑ "Past" (Web). Merram-Webster.com. n.d. Archived from the original on 24 July 2018. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
  4. 1 2 "Verb tenses". English Oxford Living Dictionaries. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 26 June 2018. Retrieved 25 June 2018.
  5. ↑ "past". oxforddictionaries.com. English Oxford Living Dictionaries. Archived from the original (Web) on 27 August 2018. Retrieved 27 August 2018.
  6. 1 2 3 "past" (Web). Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 24 July 2018. Retrieved 27 August 2018.
  7. ↑ "past" (Web). dictionary.cambridge.org. Cambridge.org. Archived from the original on 27 August 2018. Retrieved 27 August 2018.
  8. ↑ "half-past 12" (Web). EightPastFive. Archived from the original on Aug 31, 2023.
  9. ↑ Collins, Philip (5 June 2018). "Charles Dickens" (Web). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Archived from the original on 18 June 2018. Retrieved 27 August 2018.
  10. ↑ "A Christmas Carol" (Web). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. 6 June 2014. Archived from the original on 27 August 2018. Retrieved 27 August 2018.
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