---
title: The simple past ("I ate") tells about a finished action, often with… — Tense consistency and verb forms · tree and pragmatics
description: The simple past ("I ate") tells about a finished action, often with a time: "I ate at six." Who acts: simple past, Lancashire gran. A sentence of the lesson «Tense consistency and verb forms» of the english course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tense consistency and verb forms, sentence 9

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The simple past ("I ate") tells about a finished action, often with a time: "I ate at six."

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** simple past, Lancashire gran · **What happens:** eat, tell, finish · **To what, where:** simple past, six · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Tense consistency and verb forms» of the english course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (simple past, Lancashire gran), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:english:031-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms.lesson:9
# text = The simple past ("I ate") tells about a finished action, often with a time: "I ate at six."
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = english
# lesson = 031-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	simple	simple	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	past	past	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
4	(	(	PUNCT	-LRB-	_	7	punct	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	_
6	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	ate	eat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	acl	_	_
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
9	)	)	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	7	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=10:punct
10	tells	tell	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	about	about	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	finished	finish	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	14	amod	_	_
14	action	action	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
16	often	often	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
17	with	with	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
20	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	23	punct	_	_
21	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	23	punct	_	_
22	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	23	nsubj	_	_
23	ate	eat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
24	at	at	ADP	IN	_	25	case	_	_
25	six	six	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	23	obl	_	_
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
27	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **eat** *in a quote* | past | the simple past *= past* | the simple past *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent past=Patient |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | present | the simple past |  |  |  | time | about a finished action; often *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent about action=Topic |
| 3 | **finish** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 4 | **eat** *in a quote* | past | a Lancashire gran *= gran* |  |  | six |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:english:031-tense-consistency-and-verb-forms.lesson:9`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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