What is the difference between past tenses and past particles?

Past tense is something that has already happened. Past participle needs an auxiary verb.

Examples:

I ran-past tense

I have run-past participle

The “tenses” of a verb are also called the conjugation. You use these all the time. For example:

We shop everyday. “We shop” is the present tense (first person plural) of the verb: To Shop.

You may have encountered this in English classes:

Present Singular

I shop

You shop

He, She, It shops

Present Plural

We shop

You (all of you) shop

They shop.

Now each verb has forms that are used in this conjugation process. Some repeat themselves but many don’t, the best example being “To Go”. It has the forms:

go

went

gone

To oversimplify, “go” is used with the present tenses, “went” is used with the simple past:

Past Tense:

I went

You went

He, She, it went

We went

You (all of you, a group) went

They went

No auxiliary verbs there. The simple past can be used for an action that began in the past but may be continuing. For example: They went to the movies (and they are still there).

Now “gone” is the past participle form of the verb and is always used with a helping or auxiliary verb. It used in all “perfect” tenses and the most common use is for action that began and ended in the past.

For example:

I have gone to that store before. (But I’m not there now)

But you wouldn’t say: I gone to that store before.

Or at least you shouldn’t because it is very poor grammar.

The “have” is the helping verb.

See the URL for more examples.

here’s how i will explain this.

the four tenses: present, present participle, past, and past participle–all these are tenses. focus on the past and past participle tenses since you’re having trouble with them.

example verb–kick

present–kick

present participle–kicking

past–kicked

past participle–have/had kicked

in same order above, how about these example verbs: walk, mix, slap, break, and dig.

walk, mix, slap, break, dig

walking, mixing, slapping, breaking, digging

walked, mixed, slapped, broke, dug

have/had walked, have/had mixed, have/had slapped, have/had broken, have/had dug

do you see a pattern? all past tenses are just words with the -ed (except for irregular verbs like break and dig). however, all past participle tenses must have the helping word “have or had” along with the past tense. got it now? simple? 😀

In regular verbs the past participle and the past tense are both formed by adding ‘ed’ but the past participle is used with ‘have’ to make compound tenses:

I walked (past tense)

I have walked (perfect tense)

With irregular verbs this can change; so the past tense of the verb to write is ‘wrote’ but the past participle is ‘written’:

I wrote

I have written

Some other common verbs are:

past tense ———————– past participle

was ——————————- been

took ——————————– taken

went ——————————- gone

fell———————————- fallen

I hope this makes sense.