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I have seen in a movie a strange sentence which is:

I saw you kiss her yesterday.

So considering that is past simple, she should have said 'kissed' instead of 'kiss'.

I don't understand why we don't say :

I saw you kissed her yesterday.

ColleenV
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Ahmed Hesham Hesham
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2 Answers2

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You are encountering a situation known as a "verb of perception" - kiss here is an infinitive, but it's in one of the situations where to is not used before it.

Read this.

Excerpt from the above:

Most verbs of perception (e.g. hear, see, watch, notice) are followed by object + infinitive (without to).

  • I heard him cry. (NOT I heard him to cry.)
  • I watched them play. (NOT I watched them to play.)
  • I saw her cross the road. (NOT I saw her to cross the road.)

Most of these verbs can also be followed by –ing forms.

Note that there is usually a difference of meaning.

We use infinitive forms after these verbs to say that we hear or see the whole of an action or event. On the other hand, -ing forms suggest that we see or hear an action in progress.

LawrenceC
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He is saying that he actually saw him kiss her. It was present tense at the time he was seeing them - the past tense is in the word "saw".

If you wanted to use "kissed", you'd have to say something like

I saw that you kissed her.

But that means something subtly different. You'd say that if you saw the results of the kiss, not the kiss itself - perhaps some lipstick on his lips?

John Burger
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