Part I: The Parts of Speech and Parts of the Sentence in Visual Studio .NET

Printer Code-128 in Visual Studio .NET Part I: The Parts of Speech and Parts of the Sentence

3

can tell time lots of ways: look at a clock, dial a number and listen to annoying mechanical voice ("At the tone the time will be"), or check the verb The verb shows the action or state of being in the sentence In English, the verb also shows the time the action or "being" took place (For more information on finding the verb in a sentence, see 2) In some lucky languages - Thai, for example - the verb has basically one form Whether the sentence is about the past, the present, or the future doesn't matter; the verb is the same Extra words - yesterday, tomorrow, now, and so forth - indicate the time Not so in English (sigh) In English, six different tenses of verbs express time In other words, each tense places the action or the state of being of the sentence at a point in time Before you start complaining about learning six tenses, spend a moment being grateful that you don't speak Latin In case you're wondering why it's a dead language that no one speaks anymore, each verb in Latin has 120 different forms! Three of the six English tenses are called simple In this chapter, I explain the simple tenses in some detail, such as the difference between I go and I am going The other three tenses are called perfect (Trust me, the perfect tenses are far from it) I touch upon the basics of the perfect tenses: present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect in this chapter Then I dig a little more deeply into present perfect tense The other two perfect tenses - past and future are real headaches and far less common than present perfect, so I save them for later For an in-depth explanation of the past perfect and future perfect tenses, see 18

The three simple tenses are present, past, and future Each of the simple tenses Oust to make things even more fun) has two forms One is the unadorned, no-frills, plain tense This form doesn't have a separate name; it is just called present, past, or future It shows actions or states of being at a point in time, but it doesn't always pin down a specific moment The other form is called progressive The progressive form is not politically active; it doesn't make speeches about minimum wage reform or campaign finance Instead, the progressive form shows actions or a state of being in progress

Present tense tells you what is going on right now This simple tense has two forms One is called present, and the other is progressive The present form shows action or state of being that is occurring now, that is generally true, or that is always happening The present progressive form is similar, but it often implies a process (fhe difference between the two is subtle I go into more details about using these forms below) For now, take a look at a couple of sentences in the no-frills present tense: Rugelach rolls his tongue around the pastry (rolls is in present tense) Legghorn plans nothing for New Year's Eve because he never has a date (plans, has are in present tense) Now here are two sentences in the present progressive form: Alexei is axing the proposal to cut down the national forest (is axing is in present progressive form) Murgatroyd and Lulu are skiing far too fast down that cliff (are skiing is in present progressive form)

Past tense tells you what happened before the present time This simple tense also has two forms - plain and chocolate-sprinkled Sorry, I mean plain, which is called past, and past progressive Consider these two pasttense sentences: When the elastic in Ms Belli's girdle snapped, we all woke up (snapped and woke are in past tense)