imaginary past happenings is a well-established convention ”.
4
The simple past itself is irrelevant with the activities happen in the present. The activities are
already finished before the moment. As Danesi stated, “The Simple past, also known as the Preterit allows you to refer to actions that occurred in the past
without reference to the present ”.
5
All and all the simple past tense is a tense which shows activities happened and ended in a particular time in the past before the moment without
having to refer to the present time. It is also used for repeated activities happen in the past.
a. The Form of the Simple Past Tense
As it already know that the simple past tense has two types in its verb form, namely regular and irregular verbs. Beside it is also including verb of be. As
Kirn et.all.stated, the simple past tense classified into two types. They are the simple past in the regular verbs and simple past in the irregular verbs including
past tense of the verb be. The formula of each type consists of three parts: affirmative, negative and interrogative.
6
The regular verbs is the verbs formed by adding the suffix –ed and the
irregular verbs is not follow that pattern. As Thomson and Martinet explain about the verbs of the simple past form as
, “The simple past in regular verb is formed by adding
–ed to the infinitive and verb ending in –e is adding –d only the negative of regular verb and irregular verb is formed with did not
didn’t and the infinitive. The interrogative of regular and irregular verb is formed with did +
subject + infinitive ”.
7
4
Douglas Bieber, Stiq Johanson, Geoffry Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan, Longman: Grammar of Spoken and Written English, London: Pearson Education Limited, 1999,
p. 454.
5
Marcel Danesi, Basic American Grammar and Usage , New York: Barron’s
Educational Series, Inc., 2006, p. 139.
6
Elaine Kirn, Darcy Jack and Jill Korey O’Sullivan, Interaction Grammar I, New York: McGraw Hill Company, Inc., 2002, p. 106.
7
A. J. Thomson and A. V. Martinet, A Practical English Grammar, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 175
—176.
