Grammatical problem
I would appreciate it if you could explain the following:
1. June informed that there was/were no reply from Maggie after she called/had called three times on yesterday/this morning/March 7.
(May I know what tense is suitable for the above tense?)
2. The Loan Agreements has taken/has already taken by the ABC Bank’s dispatch boy.
3. The Loan Agreement was taken by the ABC Bank’s dispatched boy this afternoon.
(May I know in questions 2 and 3, which tense is correct if I mention the date?)
4. All the necessary documents has been/have been executed. – MOE Chinese reader
1. The correct sentence should read:
“June said that there had been no reply from Maggie after she called three times yesterday/this morning/on 7 March.”
The original sentence had a past reporting verb “informed”. But this is a transitive verb that needs an object, and there was no object in the original sentence, so I changed the verb to “said”. Since the reporting verb is in the simple past tense, the verb after that must go one step backwards in time and be in the past perfect tense. Hence the first part
of the sentence:
“June said that there had been no reply from Maggie ...”
(If there was an object after “informed”, you could say, for example: “June informed her manager that there had been no reply from Maggie ...”)
In the second part of the sentence, there is no need to use another past perfect verb, since the word “after” makes clear that June’s three calls must have been made before she said they had not been answered. So the simple past tense is used. Also, we don’t use “on” before “yesterday” or “this morning”, only before a date; and there is no need to name the year of the calls, since it is clear that they were made recently.
2. You wanted to use a passive present perfect verb here, but you made two errors in your verb. The first error is to use a plural subject “the Loan Agreements” with a singular verb “has”. The second error is to leave out the “be” verb that should be added to make a passive verb. Also, it is better to say “the despatch boy from the ABC Bank” instead of using an apostrophe “s” after “the ABC Bank”, since the Bank here is not regarded as a group of people. As for “already”, you may leave it out or use it if you want to emphasise that the Loan Agreements have indeed been taken. The corrected sentence would then read:
“The Loan Agreements have (already) been taken by the dispatch boy from ABC Bank.”
3. If you want to mention a specific time, like a date or a time of day, you should use the simple past tense, as you have done here. But you have made a mistake in the second half of the sentence in using “dispatched boy” instead of “dispatch boy”. The corrected sentence should read:
“The Loan Agreement was taken by the dispatch boy from ABC Bank this afternoon.”
4. The correct sentence is:
“All the necessary documents have been executed.”
The noun in the subject (“documents”) is plural and must agree with the first auxiliary verb (“have”) in the passive present perfect verb “have been executed”.
Past tense
1. Please comment on these sentences.
a. Thomas: Jane, have you had your breakfast?
Jane: Yes, I have/had already.
If the answer is had, is had the past tense of have?
b. Jane: Have you eaten?
Thomas: Yes, I have/had eaten.
2. Is this sentence correct: “I send my brother to work and pick him after 5pm every day. – Lydia
1. Both questions are in the present perfect tense, using the verbs “have had” and “have eaten” respectively. The short answers to each of those would only use the auxiliary (helping) verb “have” with no “already”. The dialogues then would be as follows:
a. Thomas: Jane, have you had your breakfast?
Jane: Yes, I have.
b. Jane: Have you eaten?
Thomas: Yes, I have.
If the question is in the simple past tense, the short answer would also use the auxiliary verb, in this case, “did”:
Thomas: Did you eat breakfast this morning, Jane?
Jane: Yes, I did.
2. You should say: “I take/drive my brother to work and fetch him after 5pm every day.”
When you send something or someone somewhere, you don’t go with that thing or person. For example, you can send a parcel by post to a friend in another town, or you can send your son to study abroad. In these cases, only the parcel and the boy go somewhere: you don’t accompany them. Also, when you “pick somebody up”, it means you “go somewhere in your car and collect somebody who is waiting for you”, but you need not take him back to your home. He may just want a lift from you to go somewhere else. But when you “fetch” somebody, you go to where he is and take him back home. I presume that your brother lives in the same house as you.
LinkWithin
