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The simple past or past simple, sometimes called the preterite, is the basic form of the past tense in Modern English. It is used principally to describe events in the past, although it also has some other uses. Regular English verbs form the simple past in ''-ed''; however there are a few hundred irregular verbs with different forms. The term "simple" is used to distinguish the syntactical construction whose basic form uses the plain past tense alone, from other past tense constructions which use auxiliaries in combination with participles, such as the past perfect and past progressive. ==Formation== Regular verbs form the simple past in ''-ed''; however there are a few hundred irregular verbs with different forms. For details see . Most verbs have a single form of the simple past, independent of the person or number of the subject (there is no addition of ''-s'' for the third person singular as in the simple present). However, the copula verb ''be'' has two past tense forms: ''was'' for the first and third persons singular, and ''were'' in other instances. The form ''were'' can also be used in place of ''was'' in conditional clauses and the like; for information on this, see English subjunctive. This is the only case in modern English where a distinction in form is made between the indicative and subjunctive moods in the past tense. Questions, other clauses requiring inversion, negations with ''not'', and emphatic forms of the simple past use the auxiliary ''did''. For details of this mechanism, see ''do''-support. A full list of forms is given below, using the (regular) verb ''help'' as an example: *Basic simple past: * *I/you/he/she/it/we/they helped *Expanded (emphatic) simple past: * *I/you/he/she/it/we/they did help *Question form: * *Did I/you/he/she/it/we/they help? *Negative: * *I/you/he/she/it/we/they did not (didn't) help *Negative question: * *Did I/you/he/she/it/we/they not help? / Didn't I/you/he/she/it/we/they help? 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Simple past」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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