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THE PAST



THE PAST

The typical vision which students learn about the Past Tense in English is that there are some regular verbs that form the past with the ending -ed, others with various irregular changes and yet others that strangely never change at all.

Even without conjugational differences in the first, second and third person forms, whether singular or plural, the mere idea that there are regular verbs and irregular verbs casts uncertainty onto the issue and many students even embark on that terrible list-learning, in an attempt to memorize every last verb in the English language. And all this trouble and strife, without mentioning the pronunciation, even with just the so-called “regular” verbs!
Nevertheless, if we perceive the past through our new vision of Directed Pronunciation, we can skip around this problem, without the slightest of difficulty.
The idea is simple and the best part about it is that there are just two aspects to observe.

1.Shift the verb in the mouth by directing the pronunciation backwards

2.Place the modal in the relative position of emphasis required:
  • Strong emphasis before the verb
  • Negative emphasis before the verb
In normal smooth and unexaggerated speech the model inflection comes after the verb

Other languages actually have the same projection, with the position intoned backwards to indicate the past is behind us. However, unlike other languages, English is based around an essentially modal and auxiliary logic to the verb system and, thus, presents certain particular features.

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