This question already has an answer here:

I know 'Did' is the past tense of 'Do' and if we want to ask question in present tense 'Do you come?' and in past tense it is 'Did you come?'. Why don't we use 'Did you came?' as came is the past tense of come?

marked as duplicate by user24743, Nathan Tuggy, Damkerng T., Stephie, ColleenV Apr 30 '16 at 13:26


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    Because the verb 'did' takes care of the past. Did + came would be double past and ungrammatical! – Maulik V Oct 16 '15 at 6:23
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    @ChiragThakar You might want to wait a couple of days before accepting an answer, btw. You might get a much better one! But people are less likely to write another answer for you if you've already accepted one! :) – Araucaria Oct 16 '15 at 16:54
  • @Araucaria Yes you are correct. But OP will accept an answer if he think the answer is sufficient for his question ;-) But your point is acceptable +1 for your comment ;-) – Sathiya Kumar Oct 17 '15 at 15:48

The verb DO takes a bare infinitive. In English verb constructions only one verb can have tense. This is always the first verb. So if did is past tense, come cannot be. It cannot be present tense either. It must be in the plain form:

  • *Did she came. (ungrammatical)
  • *Did she comes. (ungrammatical)
  • Did she come. (beautiful)

You should use 'Did you come', because 'Did you came' is simply ungrammatical. Past tense requires only the main part of the verb to be in past tense, any other parts of the verb of the sentence remain in inflexive form.


Because it is a rule of English grammar to write like this whenever a question is asked in past tense.

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    An answer that says "because that's how it is" is somewhat lacking. Can you give more reasoning or explanation for this? – Nathan Tuggy Nov 29 '15 at 4:01
