There are various types of verb changes in English.
Yes. Tense rules in English are particularly more in details than in Japanese, so it’s difficult to use them properly.
The forms of the present, the past and the future have their own progressive forms and perfect forms, right?
I made a chart so that you can refer to it.
But, I wonder how these verb forms were created in history?
Let me start from the progressive form. Look at this example sentence.
It’s different from the current writing style, but I understand its meaning.
Yes, that's right. Because the difference between the two sentences was not very clear, they were unified into the form of B.
But, how come “be verb plus –ing” gave it the meaning of “action in progress”?
I’ll tell you why, but before that, you’ll understand if you think twice. The meaning of be verb is “to have or to exist”，and –ing stands for incomplete action.
“-ing” is called “the present participle”, isn’t it?
That’s right. But why does the perfect tense have this form?
I’ sure you know “have” means “to possess something”, right? In the past, it was used as the form of perfect tense.
That’s why we still use “have” now.
As you may know, the past participle in itself has the meaning of passiveness, so the present perfect tense form, which is “have plus past participle,” means to have such passive state.
You can use this way of thinking to understand the form of the passive voice. The reason why the passive voice form is “be plus past particle” is that it means “to have being the passive state”.
It was such a simple thing!