I'm hoping the grammar experts here can help me explain an aspect of English grammar to my Russian wife, who is taking ESOL lessons.

Consider phrases like the following:

I didn't go to the cinema
I didn't get up
I didn't find the book

Now, my wife is finding this usage of English complicated to understand, because her teacher has explained that the verb that follows "didn't" in these sentences is in the present tense. This seems illogical, to my wife, as the phrases themselves are past tense (her actual words were along the lines of, 'Stupid language, using the present tense for a negative past tense'. But I believe that her teacher is wrong, and that the verbs 'go', 'get up' and 'find' in the above examples are actually the infinitive with the word 'to' omitted. Can anyone tell me who is right about this?

Alex

Okay, I'm not an expert, at least not in English grammar (weirdly, my French and German is much better, probably because I was actually taught it.)

But surely 'find' is the infinitive, and 'did/didn't' the auxiliary? That's how I understand it, anyway.

Happy to be corrected if I'm totally wrong

Oooh, this is a tasty one. You could always email David Crystal:

http://www.davidcrystal.com/

Meanwhile, I agree with you. I think what is perhaps confusing your wife is that in Russian, as in many languages - Latin perhaps the supreme example - each tense has its own nature/endings and so on, and that version of the verb root completely expresses exactly what that form of the verb signifies. (I did a year of Russian at school, which was ages ago, so I may be remembering wrong.)

Whereas our "go" isn't present tense, of itself, as you say. It's one form of the verb usually called "To go" - and "go" is usually called the infinitive, though it isn't really without its "to". I think you just call it a present participle. ("gone" and "went" are past participles)

And it's also in "I go" "they go", so we think of it as present tense. But it isn't, in that sense of 'go' meaning exclusively "going now" and nothing else, because it also turns up in a future-y way in "I shall go" and in a past-y way in "I did go".

In examples like that, the "shall" and "did" are auxiliary verbs, and much of the time they're what change, to make the root verb "go" mean different things, even though it doesn't change. To finish off the unfortunate TEFL student, there's also the one which combines what they thought was a future construction with a past-tense form of the core verb: "I will have gone to the market by the time I'm due at my English classes."

It seems to me, as an amateur, that often the "tense" (in "" as Seely does it, when it's not the true past tense form such as "gone", but the form of the main verb, but the overall effect of the verb phrase) is changed by what the auxiliary verb is up to - will, shall, did... not the root (core?) verb, which stays the same, or changes according to a set of different rules.

Fun, huh? On the other hand, I love mucking about with sentence order, so I love our almost un-inflected, phrasal English...

Emma

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Tsk!

(in "" as Seely does it, when it's not the true past tense form such as "gone", but the overall effect of the verb phrase)

I used to teach EFL and agree with both you and Astrea, in "I didn't go to the cinema" "go" is the infinitive of the verb.

It's confusing in English because the infinitive is usually the same as the first person present form of the verb, which is possibly what your wife's teacher meant? [Scrabbling for excuses because basically she's wrong!]

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Crossed with Emma!

Although isn't the present participle "going" etc?

Crystal says that (regular) verbs have four forms: the base form, the -s form, the -ing form , and the -ed form. No infinitives or participles at all.

I notice that he never talks about past and present participles, presumably because actually forms which get called those also get used in other ways. 'present' participle running, for example, in a past phrase "I was running."

He calls both 'going' and some forms of 'go', 'non-finite forms', in that their form doesn't change with tense, person and so on.

going is an "-ing" participle.

go he calls a 'base form used as an infinitive': "I might go" "She will go".

Which all makes a lot of sense to me, though it's a slightly different terminology and thinking from what most of us were taught or (more likely if you're younger than what - 50?) picked up in other languages and mapped across to English...

But much traditional English grammar-description was mapped across from Latin, which doesn't suit it either. The new way is much clearer and makes more sense, being specifically designed for our very peculiar, hybrid language...

Emma

I think Crystal's description definitely makes a lot of sense. For eg talking about a future "tense" in English doesn't really work in a lot of ways. I was taught to use mode and aspect at university which reflects the structure of the English language much more accurately and explains better how the different structures interact to produce different meanings.

I think EFL teaching uses words like tense and infinitive in an attempt to help students map from their understanding of their own language, but it's always going to be a very imperfect match and some areas are more imperfect than others.

The teacher is definitely causing unnecessary confusion. The verb is to all intents and purposes an infinitive.

It is actually the same in Russian when an auxiliary is used. I can't reproduce Cyrillic characters on ww but an example using the auxiliary 'can' would be:

I cannot do (something) (present)
Ya nye mogu dyelat' (shto-nibud' )

I could not do (something) (past)
Ya nye mog dyelat' (shto-nibud' )

The infinitive do/dyelat' is unaffected by the tense of the auxiliary. It's just an infinitive which has no intrinsic tense. The tense of the entire expression is determined by the tense of the auxiliary.

I hope the detail's right as I'm doing it from memory but I'm sure the principle is correct.

Chris

Hi Chris,

Your examples are correct Russian. My wife's problem is mainly to do with the fact that English (a) has more ways of expressing verb tenses (present and past, in particular) than Russian, and (b) has more tenses in general. Russian only has 3 - present, future and past - plus a conditional particle that combines with past tense to give conditional, and expressions of time to give all those awkward things like future conditional, pluperfect, etc.

Thanks to everyone who has responded. The consensus seems to be that my understanding of the "didn't do" form of the past is correct.

Alex

Yeah, the Russians have an easier time of it, tense wise. Though I seem to remember from my A-level Russian that while there are essentially three tenses - past, present, future - every verb is in pairs, and you use one for the perfect, and one for the imperfect.

I seem to recall the verbs of motion were a bit tricky!

I'd say this teacher was talking bollocks. Having taught EFL/ESOL I would describe "I didn't go" as past of "do" plus infinitive (without 'to" if I had to).

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Isn't a present participle what Crystal and teachers call the -ing form?

what Crystal and teachers call the -ing form

I think my wife is starting to think along those lines, about English verbs in general

Though I seem to remember from my A-level Russian that while there are essentially three tenses - past, present, future - every verb is in pairs, and you use one for the perfect, and one for the imperfect. I seem to recall the verbs of motion were a bit tricky!

I'm constantly amazed by how many fellow-Brits actually have some knowledge of Russian. Yes, you're right. In a nutshell:

- Every verb has an imperfective and a perfective variant.
- The perfective gives you the past perfect when rendered into the past tense, while the imperfective gives you the past imperfect.
- The perfective gives you the future tense when rendered into the present tense form (actually, according to my wife, it implies that you'll do the action at some unspecified point in time, which may be 'now' or may be later.)
- The imperfective gives you the present tense, when rendered into the present tense form.
- Verbs of motion are indeed complicated. Every one has a general form (e.g. khodit' = to walk about) and a specific form (e.g. idti = to walk in a particular direction). The perfective form of a going verb is formed by adding a prefix to the specific form. If you add a prefix to the general form, you get an imperfective verb with a slightly modified meaning.

(But when I tried to tell my wife that Russian had two forms of verb, she was amazed and completely disbelieving. When I gave her some examples, she considered them to be different verbs. Which makes it difficult for her to understand how to translate such verb pairs into their English equivalents - she expects us to have two verbs, as well.)

Alex

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By the way, I'm doing evening classes in Welsh at the moment. If you thought Russian is complicated...

I'm doing evening classes in Welsh at the moment.

The thing I could never, ever get my head round in Welsh was the way that the beginnings of words can change. Everyone knows that's the bit that doesn't...

I remember thinking that Russian verbs were gloriously logical and well-organised. But I hadn't realised that they don't think of the two forms as essentially the same verb at all. How interesting.

Alex, how is your wife on double negatives, though? I've tried to explain that to more than one Slav-speaker, and it's an illustration of the extent to which language does actually shape how we conceptualise things. They just, just can't grasp it.

Emma

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And articles, of course. Always seems to be the last thing that even brilliant English-speakers can't really grapple with. Another thing for which there just isn't conceptual space for.

The thing I could never, ever get my head round in Welsh was the way that the beginnings of words can change.

That's the bit that is taxing everyone in my class. The good news is that it only affects 9 consonants. The bad news is that there doesn't seem to be much consistency in the rules that say when it happens (and there are 3 different forms of mutation). Welsh, more than any other language that I've encountered, seems to be a language of exceptions. (Plus, in a country small enough to walk the length of in less than a week, there is more than one variant of the language.)

Alex, how is your wife on double negatives, though?

I can't remember her mentioning any difficulty with that, yet. I can, however, remember her son seeming to have difficulties with the idea that 2 - (-2) is the same as 2 + 2.

But yes, articles are something of a difficulty for her. Having been confronted with some of the confusion she had, and having thereby seen the problem from her perspective, English is sometimes a little illogical. For example, in a phrase such as

The tiger is a member of the cat family.

why do we say "the tiger" when we are not talking about a specific one? It's this kind of usage which seems to throw my wife.

(But then, Welsh can't make its mind up about articles. They've got a definite one, but not an indefinite one. And the definite one sounds like 'a' when it's spoken, even though it's [often, but not always] spelled 'y'.)

Alex

Yes, articles are the real give away.

why do we say "the tiger" when we are not talking about a specific one?

Yes. In what way is that sentence not the same as saying, "Tigers are members of the cat family".

It's using a singular noun as representative of a species, isn't' it, whereas 'tigers' doesn't quite mean all tigers, always, by virtue of their very nature. Seems obvious to us, but I can see if you're only understanding the basics of what articles are for, because you don't have them in your language, that would be the subtlety that breaks the camel's back.

Just as Greek (I think) had a form of the noun which was dual - neither singular (one) nor plural (three or more) - I bet there are languages that have an article specially for this kind of single-but-representative...

Going back to verbs, I remember one of my au pairs asking me to explain the difference in usage between:

Try to light the fire.

Try lighting the fire.

I really had to think, and even then I could only explain it by example.

Emma