Two tenses in one sentence

Question

I don't know what tense a sentence is defined as being if there are two different verb tenses in each one for example:
"While walking home, I dropped my pen".

From what I can see "dropped my pen" is Simple past and "walking home" is Present continuous, so my question is what is the general tense of the sentence?

I add a few more examples:
"I cannot attend the meeting as I will be having friends over for dinner tonight".
"When I arrived at the petrol station, I realised I had left my credit card at home".
"The car broke down because I was driving recklessly" .

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

Anonymous "dropped my pen" is Simple past

Right.

Anonymous "walking home" is Present continuous,

No; it is tenseless: it is a non-finite clause.

Anonymousmy question is what is the general tense of the sentence?

The main clause is simple past.

AnonymousI don't know what tense a sentence is defined as being if there are two different verb tenses

It depends on the sentence structure. Simple and complex sentences assume the tense of the main verb, but compound sentences can have no single time reference.

Anonymous"I cannot attend the meeting as I will be having friends over for dinner tonight"."When I arrived at the petrol station, I realised I had left my credit card at home"."The car broke down because I was driving recklessly"

These are all complex sentences that would be assigned the time of the main verbs (cannot attend, realized, broke down). Of course the subordinated verbs in the last two are also past tense verbs.

Anonymous · Answer

I heard that there is something called mixed tense. If I am expected to answer a question on tenses am I entitled to give the names of the two tenses and the part of the sentence they each refer to?

How do I decide what the main verb tense of a sentence is, in the case where there are two different tenses?

Mister Micawber · Answer

Anonymous If I am expected to answer a question on tenses am I entitled to give the names of the two tenses and the part of the sentence they each refer to?

That depends on your teacher, of course.

AnonymousHow do I decide what the main verb tense of a sentence is, in the case where there are two different tenses?

It is the verb in the main clause, as I described briefly above. If you are not familiar with the terms 'main clause' and 'subordinate clause', then please use your search engine to find explanations and examples of the various types of sentence structures: it is a subject too broad for this format.

Two tenses in one sentence

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