Past and present tense

[Ceedee]

This intrigued me from a forum I was reading

A poster presented a screenshot with the following title

 

"Mister, your time has gone." (Yes, he does mean that in past tense...)

 

The following post seems to challenge this as follows..

 

"Strictly speaking, it's not a past tense: you couldn't say: "Yesterday, your time has gone" - it would be "your time had gone"

Gone is the past form of to go but has is in the present tense.

It's the same as when you say I have been playing tennis for two hours: it's the present. Right now you have been playing for 2 hours, if you see what I mean"

 

Is this correct in terms of tense etc. i lack the nescessary skills in this area

yet it seems to me that the first post could be correct when referring to time.

Also can has and gone not be used in other tenses for example..

 

"when he has gone i will let you know"

 

Looking for a simple answer here as i am not very clued up on this area.

[Tormod]

The term "your time has gone" seems wrong to me. "Your time is up" would be more correct, and is present tense.

 

That would allow for "yesterday, your time was up", which would be a grammatically correct use of the past tense.

 

Taken out of context I am not sure I grasp the meaning of the original sentence. I would not think of it as "your time is up" but rather "your time has gone (to something)", as in "where did your time go? My time has gone to writing letters". Personally I'd probably say "my time was spent writing letters" (or "has been spent") rather than "gone to".

[Qfwfq]

Apart from how it is used, 'has gone' is the present perfect of 'go' while the past simple is 'went'.

 

Present perfect is composed of the auxilliary 'have' cojugated in the present tense and the past participle of the verb in question. Example, with the verbs 'run', 'come' and 'write':

 

Past Simple | Present Perfect

I ran............| I have run

I came.........| I have come

I wrote........| I have written

 

but for regular verbs in English the past prticiple is the same as the past simple, so the present perfect becomes just a matter of adding 'have' before the verb (e. g. "I tried" and "I have tried"). There is also the past perfect, which is composed of 'had' (the past simple of 'have') and the past participle. "I had gone" is therefore the past perfect of 'go'.

 

The sense of the present perfect is that an action is now complete. In practice this means it happened "sometime before now". The sense of the past perfect is similar but with some past event in place of now. Like:

 

"By the time the noon bells tolled, I

had baked

six cakes."

 

which means the baking was done some time before the noon bells tolled.

[Chacmool]

Excellent explanation, Q! :lol:

[Qfwfq]

Aww, shicks Chac, few times I's tawt English ta folks that wuz learnin it fer their cureers!