Grammar-the application and description of "forms"?

Question

Can anyone give me an example and description of Continuous, Perfect and passive forms?

Answer 1

Continuous: I am answering your question.

Perfect: I have answered your question.

Passive: You question has been answered.

Answer 2

Verbs (or action/doing words) can be changed to convey different meanings, such as when something happened or for how long.  These changes are classified under TENSE (present, past), ASPECT (simple, perfect, progressive/continuous, perfect progressive) and VOICE (active, passive).

TENSE is a grammatical term referring to specific changes we make to words to denote time.  In English we only have present and past tenses, future time is denoted by using a particular combination of verbs in the present tense, which we understand to mean the future.

ASPECT denotes how something is happening in time, such as when it is a complete action, whether it has finished yet etc.  Continuous (also called progressive) aspect indicates that an action is ongoing and is marked by taking the verb and putting a form of "to be" in front of it and adding -ing to the end, such as in the previous examples: "he is singing" (present progressive) and "he was singing" (past progressive).

Perfect aspect indicates a completed action and is marked by putting a form of "to have" in front of the verb and using its participle form as in "he has sung" (present perfect) and "he had sung" (past perfect).  The previous examples given are incorrect, they show simple aspect, which is different from perfect aspect.

VOICE can only be passive or active, and refers to whether the subject is actively doing something, or whether the subject is being acted upon, e.g. "I am eating the apple" (active) vs. "The apple is being eaten by me" (passive).  The previous answer's examples are: "I went to a concert" (ACTIVE) and "some beautiful songs were sung" (passive)

Hope this makes sense!

Answer 3

Continuous:

Present - I am singing a song

Past - I was singing a song

Future - I will be singing a song

"Perfect" - We usually call this past simple in English.

I sang a song

Passive

I went to a concert. Some beautiful songs were sung.

Answer 4

Enough songs, already.