Question

'Did you get your books?' Which tense is this sentence in

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Answer 1

The sentence is in the past tense.

• It is in the form of simple past tense.

• Simple past tense is used to describe events or actions that have taken place in the past.

• In case of simple past, negatives, as well as question forms, can be made with the help of the past form of the auxiliary verb 'do'( did).

• In this case, a yes/no question has been formed using the word 'did'.

Examples:

1. Did they skip dinner?- forming a yes/no question

2. I did not want to hide it. - forming a negative statement

3. Why did they come here? - forming a 'Wh' question.

Answer 2

The tense of the given sentence is Simple Past or Past Indefinite Tense.

Simple Past Tense is used to :

a)  talk about actions which occurred at regular intervals in the past.  

e.g. Last year I drove to Ambala once a month.

b) to talk about situations which existed for a period of time in the past.  

e.g. Thousands of years ago humans lived in caves.

c)  Talk about non-continuous actions which occurred at a definite time in the past.

e.g. India launched Mars Orbiter Mission in 2013.

Form of Verb Used in This Tense

Past Simple Tense form ends in ed or V2. Simple past tense form of the irregular verbs is used. We use did+V1 form in negatives and questions. For example,’ The car did not start.’ and ‘What did you tell the police?’

For questions in simple past tense we use the following structure:

Did+S+V1+O?