Hi
I have a question about verb tenses
In this particular sentence
The voluminous personal papers of Thomas Edison reveal that his inventions typically did not spring to life in a flash but evolved slowly from previous works.
I believe that “did not spring to life” is in simple past (due to presence of “did”) and thus parallel to “evolved”
Why don’t we say
did not sprang to life
did not sprung to life
I guess I am missing some form of usage of verbs
Because “to do” can only take the infinitive. Which is logical, since the sense of “past” is already conveyed in the past simple “did”: you don’t need any other word’s expressing it.
Simple verbs:
I go
I went
Compound verbs:
I can go
I could go
I will go
I would go
I wanted to go
I do go
I did go
Didn’t really get what you mean to say here . Which infinitive are you talking about ?
Also found a few sentences on the internet
Whatever he did or did not sprang not from hatred of this or that man, but from fear
The reason he did not sprang once more from the state of his health following the stroke.
Are these incorrect ?
Hi Gmatprep14,
The point being made is that after ‘do’ and ‘did’ when used to make negative or interrogatives are followed by the infinitive of the main verb. The infinitive is ‘spring’ and the past simple is ‘sprang’ and the past participle is sprung. You thus form questions like this: Did you spring? Do you spring? and negatives like this: I didn’t spring and I do not spring.
Alan
It’s actually quite simple. Sprang is a shortened form made up of DO+SPRING. Likewise, springs is a shortened form of DOES+SPRING.
English has many shortened forms but each represents a long from. This is where the ‘s’ for he/she/it verbs comes from and also where the ‘d’ for regular past tense verbs is derived. Observe:
John doeS walk. = John walkS.
John diD walk. = John walkeD.
Likewise: doeS + have = haS, diD + have = haD, etc.
Thanks guys
I went back to the basics and found that I was missing one basic construction of tenses used in negative and interrogative sentences, which is
Subject + did + not + verb in base form
Examples - X did not spring
In the same vein , are the most often used sentences wrong ?
1 - I did not knew that …
should it be
I did not know that
2 - I did not made that call
should it be
I did not make that call
Now you’ve got it!
P E R F E C T !!!
Yes! And note that base form is the same as infinitive (the infinitive is often preceded by “to”; in that case you might say that “to do” is the infinitive, or that just “do” is the infinitive and “to” a particle - it doesn’t really matter).
I like to refer to ‘to do’ as the infinitive and ‘do’ as the finite verb.
The finite verb? Really, OB? I do not know enough about the origin of the form “do” in “I will do” to be sure that it was originally an infinitive in Proto-Germanic; but is it common to call it the finite verb?
wonderful , I am amazed to see such good responses in no time at all. Thank you all .
I am preparing for GMAT and grammar and formal usage of language are a pain to me . Will be posting a lot of queries here . Hoping to get all my doubts clear before the big day