wrote/written

[grammarian]

I wrote the sentence in question on this thread last year. When I wrote the sentence, I wasn't focused so much on the grammar. I just wrote the sentence in the way that I thought was grammatically correct.

The sentence in question is the following sentence: "The Greek creation story written by Hesiod tells how the world developed from chaos to an ordered structure controlled by the Olympian Gods."

My first question is the following: Is my use of the word written (as opposed to wrote) grammatically correct in the sentence above?

The sentence above sounds right to me. So my intuition when I first wrote the above quote was that it is grammatically correct. But information I read in Warriner's English Grammar and Composition textbook contradicts my intuitions. According to Warriner, wrote is the past tense of the verb write. Warriner's says that written is the past perfect tense of write. I believe that the proper tense of the word write in the above quote would be the past tense. The past tense of write is wrote. But last year, I wrote this sentence in the past perfect tense.

If written is the correct word for the sentence in question, why should the sentence in question be in the past perfect tense instead of the past tense?

Is it the case that written is a past participle in the sentence in question, and past participles are supposed to be in the past perfect tense?

None of these are rhetorical questions. Please answer them all.

[Josef Essberger]

This sentence is in the present simple tense (tells). The word “written” is the past participle of “write”.

[grammarian]

This sentence is in the present simple tense (tells). The word “written” is the past participle of “write”.

Is a past participle supposed to be in the past perfect tense (like it is in the sentence in question)?

[grammarian]

This sentence is in the present simple tense (tells). The word “written” is the past participle of “write”.

Is my example sentence grammatically correct?

[Josef Essberger]

Your sentence is correct and excellent.

In the sentence you provided, "written" is the past participle form of the verb "write." It is functioning as an adjective, modifying the noun "story." In this case, "written" describes the state or condition of the creation story—it was written by Hesiod.

[grammarian]

Your sentence is correct and excellent.

In the sentence you provided, "written" is the past participle form of the verb "write." It is functioning as an adjective, modifying the noun "story." In this case, "written" describes the state or condition of the creation story—it was written by Hesiod.

Ok thank you. You have cleared this up 100%. I hope you can take a stab at the other two threads that i created on the "Help Each other with English" subforum.

[Josef Essberger]

Is a past participle supposed to be in the past perfect tense (like it is in the sentence in question)?

A past participle is not supposed to be in any tense. It is simply a form of the verb and is sometimes used to make perfect tenses and occasionally adjectives. It is sometimes known as Verb3 (V3) and is the third form in the following example verbs:

work worked worked (regular)
sing sang sung (irregular)
write wrote written (irregular)