When reading grammar, I find the names of the tenses kind of weird to me;
- Present simple and not simple present
- past simple and not simple past
- present continuous and not continuous present
- etc
Does this contradict with the "adjective noun" ordering rule or is it an exception (or something else)?
Best Answer
I don't think "present simple" or "past simple" contradict the "adjective noun" ordering rule;
You can consider "present" and "past" (the two morphologically distinct tense forms of the English tense system) as qualifying grammatical aspects (progressive or perfect).
Hence "past simple" or "present continuous".
But it is more a usage than a strict grammatical rule here:
Present simple can also be referred as "Simple Present".
To rephrase the first part (about adjectives) a bit more clearly:
The English Grammatical aspect Wikipedia entry mentions:
"The English tense-aspect system has two tenses, present and past, which are morphologically distinct."
My point is that the tenses act as qualifier (like adjectives do) for the grammatical aspects (same wikipedia entry: aspects beings "simple", "progressive", "perfect", ...).
So if the tenses are considered as adjectives, they are rightly placed in front of the aspects they qualify.