TPS News

Answer: “begun” should be “began”

“The outer edge of the monsoon arrived onshore and the light fixture on the balcony began to sway as the wind whistled through the balustrade.”

Error: The writer began well but “begun” ended that. The sentence fragment should read… “the light fixture on the balcony began to sway…” The begin-began-begun tenses can cause problems, mostly between the latter two choices, began and begun. Simply put, the past tense word “began” stands alone, while the past participle “begun” needs another verb, such as has or have. In this sentence, “began to sway” is in grammatical harmony with “the monsoon arrived.” Had the first part of the sentence contained this phrase, “the monsoon had arrived,” the second part of the sentence might have correctly read, “and the light fixture… begun to sway…,” with the second “had” being assumed. An error such as this can spoil an otherwise fine paper.
句子開頭寫得不錯，但是 “begun” 一出現就壞了句子。這部分的句子應該改成 “the light fixture on the balcony began to sway…”（陽台上的燈具開始搖晃）。Begin-began-begun 的動詞變化常讓人出錯，尤其是過去式 began 和過去分詞 begun。簡單來說，began可以單獨使用，而 begun 需要和另一個動詞一起出現，例如 has 或 have。本句中，“began to sway” 與 “the monsoon arrived”（雨季來臨）時態一致；如果句子前半寫的是 “the monsoon had arrived”，後半部就可以寫 “and the light fixture… begun to sway…”，因為 had 前面出現過，後面可以省略。這類錯誤會破壞一篇好論文，應小心避免。