The use of the past tensesin German and English

The article is devoted to the use of past tense forms in German and English. It contains some important aspects of the research results. The present work is a study of the function of the simple and compound past tenses in German and English. ‘It is largely an attempt to apply the findings of recent investigations to a substantial corpus of material. The tense-forms of language do not denote time (this is done by contextual elements such as adverbials) but inform the hearer about the speaker's attitude towards events.