Confusion with past tense and present tense

Question

Anthropology is a science dealing with man and his origins. In this strategy, however, I'll conveniently redefine anthropology as "being interested, without judgment, in the way other people choose to live and behave." This strategy is geared toward developing your compassion, as well as a way of becoming more patient.

I believe the "is geared" is in present tense. But why is geared in past tense? what part of speech is geared?

Whenever a court is called upon to enforce a contract in which the price was never actually set, and where it finds that the parties intended to be bound by the open price agreement, the court is faced with the task of providing a price term.

I believe the "is called" is in the present tense. But why is "called" in past tense? When do I need to use those when writing? Than you!

Answer 1

Whenever a past participle like "geared", "called" or any other is found after the verb "be" or similar copulative verbs, that is, verbs whose only purpose is to link the subject and the predicate (other copulative verbs are "seem", "appear", "become" -- for a more complete list, see here), we are faced with two possibilities:

1. The past participle indicates that the sentence is in the passive voice, that is, that what seems to be the subject is actually the object of an action performed by somebody or something else. This is the case with "A court is called upon to enforce a contract": the implication here is that the parties to the contract call upon (ask) the court to enforce the contract. "The parties to the contract" is the subject in the active voice and may, or may not, appear as the agent in the passive voice (in this case, it does not appear, because it is deemed to be implicit and saying "...is called upon by the parties to the contract" would be redundant). The main point here is that "is called upon" expresses an action.

2. The past participle has adjectival value. This is the case with "geared". In "This strategy is geared toward developing your compassion" (a similar case would be "This strategy is aimed at developing your compassion"), "is geared ..." expresses a state. The subject is not the object of an action done by somebody else.

In some cases, the same past participle may express an action (passive meaning) or a state (adjectival meaning). The right interpretation will depend on the context. Please compare:

• The window was broken during the attack. (Here, "was broken" is indicative of an action: someone broke the window during the attack.) In this case, "was broken" is the passive form of the verb in the simple past "broke".

• The window was broken and we had to move to another room because it was too cold in there. (Here, reference is being made to the broken condition of the window.) In this case, "was broken" is a verb phrase composed by the main verb "was" and the adjectival "broken".

Answer 2

Each verb in your examples is actually the start of (I believe) a past participle phrase that modifies the related subject (the function of the phrase after "be" being that of a "subject complement" in syntax), in the general form "A is B". In these sentences the actual verb is the simple "to be" verb.

[this strategy] is [geared toward developing your compassion, etc.]

[a court] is [called upon to enforce a contract, etc.]

You can use a simple adjective to see the structure more clearly:

the strategy is instructive.

the court is empowered.

The participle phrase takes a verb and uses it as either an adjective or an adverb. Your examples are compound sentences, so if you want you can break them into separate or simpler sentences to improve comprehension:

This strategy is [geared toward ...]. This strategy is also [a way to ...]

Whenever the court [is asked to enforce a rule], where [some other condition is true], the court must [do something].

Participle phrases are common in English because they allow you to "package" relevant information to modify some other part of the sentence.

[Abandoned by everyone he had considered to be his friends,] he didn't know what to do.

The participle phrase at the start of this sentence modifies "he" and provides context for the main sentence.