Stuart Kovinsky wrote:mmslf75 wrote:Stuart Kovinsky wrote:mmslf75 wrote:"are convinced that" also contains, CONVINCED which is past right ?
No... to be honest, I don't know what the official grammatical terminology is (you never need to know technical language for the GMAT!), but even though "convinced" sounds like the past, it's not.
I was convinced;
I am convinced;and
I will be convinced
are examples of the past, present and future, respectively, but all use "convinced" as part of the construction.
There are other words that work the same way, such as "tired" and "reduced"; what they all have in common is that they describe states of being and require the verb "to be" first. The form of the verb "to be" that you use determines the tense of the action.
Ok...
By saying TO BE VERBS u mean basic forms of VERBS ??
Can u give examples please!!
Umm.. I just gave a bunch of examples... heh.
I was tired/I am tired/I will be tired.
Taxes were reduced/Taxes are reduced/Taxes will be reduced.
He was convinced/He is convinced/He will be convinced.
In all of those cases, the part of the sentence that you're thinking of as a verb ("tired", "reduced", "convinced") is actually the object of the verb "to be", in much the same way "happy" is the object of "to be" in the sentence "He is happy".
So, the action in all of those sentences is "being" and the following word ("tired", "reduced", "convinced") is simply
what you are being, not
when you are being it.
yeah.
in fact, stuart is basically just giving you a summary of the
passive voice.
that's all these verbs are: passive verbs.
i was convinced --> past, passive
i had been convinced --> past perfect, passive
i am convinced --> present, passive
i have been convinced --> present perfect, passive
i would be convinced --> conditional, passive
(it is important that) i be convinced --> subjunctive, passive
etc.
etc.
these verbs can take every tense that's possible for normal "active" verbs.
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in any case:
if you see
studies have shown that...
X said that...
people believe that...
X has found that...
etc.
these are just "WARMUPS" and
can be completely ignored in any treatment of the grammar of the sentence.
they don't even affect verb tense:
studies have found that X happened
studies have found that X currently happens
studies have found that X will happen
studies have found that X had happened (before Y happened)
studies have found that X has happened
studies have found that X would have happened (if Y had happened)
etc.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.
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