The tense table has twelve boxes, and a course gives them equal time. A page does not. In one chapter, 216 pronoun subjects are followed by a verb phrase. The simple boxes, present and past, hold 55, and the phrases with a modal in front hold 57. The lab files 3 as progressive.
Core ideas
Three ideas, and the last one is about the lab.
The tense table has twelve boxes: present, past and future, each simple, progressive, perfect and perfect progressive. The lab sorts the phrase after each pronoun into those boxes, and adds groups the table does not draw: be or have as the main verb, be and a participle, which may be the passive or an adjective, and do as a helping verb.
In the chapter the largest groups are be as the main verb (39), a modal in front (57) and the plain present and past (55). Together they hold 151 of the 216. The other groups share the rest.
The lab calls it no verb found, and it holds 42 of 216. The rows are printed, and they are the lab being honest: a verb the word list lacks, a pronoun that is an object, he ought to. A count that hides its group for the rest is not a count.
The material
The lab files two phrases in 216 as progressive and four as perfect. Read them, because they are the ones taught in class for the most time.
You have been given a table of twelve boxes: present, past and future, each simple, progressive, perfect and perfect progressive. It is a good table. It is also usually taught as if each box mattered the same.
Count and it does not. The lab takes every pronoun in Chapter XXVI, 216 of them, and sorts the verb phrase after each into a box.
Be as the main verb holds 38, the largest named group. A modal in front holds 57, and the table under the boxes splits it: 28 with a bare verb straight after, I will try; 27 filed as modal, other, most of them be as the main verb with a modal in front, I should be miserable, it will be as well, and the rest gaps of the kinds “After a Modal, the Verb Is Bare” sorted; one modal perfect, we must have met; and one modal progressive, I will not be wishing. The plain present and past hold 55: past simple 27, present simple 25 and past simple with do 3.
The small groups: be and a participle hold 4, and only one of the four, you are warned, plainly says what was done to the subject; satisfied, resolved and convinced read as states. The perfect holds 4. The progressive holds 3. Forty-two are filed as no verb found.
So the simple boxes and the phrases with a modal in front hold 112 of the 216, just over half. The progressive holds 1.4%.
The three progressives are she has been acting, I will not be wishing and he was now rendering himself agreeable, 3 of 216, 1.4%, and reading the rows by hand finds no more. “Be Is Mostly a Main Verb” finds six -ing forms after be in this same chapter by scan and seven by hand. The difference is that this lab reads only the phrase after a pronoun, and this is being serious, my aunt is going, Mrs. Hurst were going out and his marriage was fast approaching have no pronoun in front.
The 42 in no verb found are the lab being honest. Read the rows. Some are an object, as in to use it your father. Some have a word between the pronoun and its verb, as in we all expect, and some a verb the word list lacks, as in she endeavoured to. Five are I cannot, which the lab does not read as can and not. Some are he ought to, where ought is not one of the helping verbs the lab tracks. They are printed so you can sort them yourself.
Counted once over the whole novel, which no page can carry, and quoted here: 8,864 pronoun subjects. Past simple is 18.2%, be as the main verb 15.5%, present simple 12.5%, and a modal or future simple 8.4%. The passive is 3.3%, the past perfect 2.8%, the present perfect 1.8%, and all the progressive phrases together 143 of the 8,864, 1.6%. No verb found is 17.7%.
Switch the lab to the two modern documents. They have 34 pronoun subjects. The simple boxes hold 14, 41.2%. The perfect holds 3, 8.8%. The progressive holds 0. The boxes that a page uses are about the same in 1813 and 2026.
None of this tells you which box to choose. A writer picks a box because of what they mean, and a count of printed words cannot see that. It tells you which boxes to practise first if you have little time, and which to know well enough to read.
Interactive
Every pronoun, modal, have, be and not in the chapter, and what comes next
| box | pronoun subjects | share |
|---|
Method
Collect the helping verbs, then look at the word after them.
Will not be, has been, did. Skip not and short adverb words.
The word after the last helping verb: wishing, acting, written, afraid.
Have and a participle is a perfect. Be and an -ing word is a progressive. A modal alone is the modal box. Be and a participle is the passive.
Has been acting is present, perfect, progressive: three parts in one phrase. The names are a way to say the parts, not a thing to learn by heart.
Each line is a verb phrase after a pronoun, and the box the lab gave it.
The first two are the simple boxes. The third, be as the main verb, is a group of its own, and it is the largest named group in the chapter: 39 phrases. The fourth is the modal box, and the future of the table lives there as will and a bare verb. The last two are the rare ones. A phrase with three parts, present, perfect and progressive at once, appears once in 216.
You should be able to sort every pronoun-subject verb phrase in a printed chapter into the tense table's boxes or into the extra groups the lab adds, read off the shares, and say which boxes carry most of the writing and which carry almost none.
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