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u911859
Joined: 16 Apr 2009
Posts: 15
Location: Taiwan
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 Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 6:09 pm Post subject: present tense or past tense |
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Hi,
I encounter some problems about the tense of a verb in an English sentence.
I don't know whether the verb "focus" in the followign sentence should be in the present tense or past tense.
"Almost all the previous studies on Chinese comparatives primarily focus/focused on examples below." |
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dragn
Joined: 17 Feb 2009
Posts: 450
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| Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 7:45 am Post subject: |
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I don't know whether the verb "focus" in the followign sentence should be in the present tense or past tense.
"Almost all the previous studies on Chinese comparatives primarily focus/focused on examples below." |
Although I can imagine contexts in which either would be natural and correct, I have a feeling you would see present tense used in a sentence like this more often than past tense.
The reason for this is that everything that happens or is discussed in a book exists out of the flow of time. When somebody publishes a novel, every incident or conversation that occurs in that story happens anew for each and every reader that reads those words at the moment he or she reads them.
For example, it doesn't matter that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet over four hundred years ago: every time I read the famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy, it's as if I am reading it for the first time; I experience it all over again at that moment of reading.
As a result, it's normal in English to say something happens (rather than happened) or a someone says (rather than said) something in a book...and that some studies focus (rather than focused) on something.
Hope this helps.
Greg |
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