student asking question

I don't know the grammar well, so I'm curious about the order of the action. Is it "broken down and then cried" or "broken down and cry at the same time"? It can be too minor question, but please teach me the order of the action.

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

In this particular clip, the model is saying that she has "broken down and cried" at the same time. Here the crying is a sign of the break down rather than an after effect. You can tell this because she says "broken down...crying" rather than "broken down... cried". The use of the -ing form lets us know that it is progressive so we can infer that she started to cry and continued crying during the "break down". They are not separate events. Ex: He broke down eating his sandwich. (Both happens at the same time). Ex: He broke down and ate his sandwich. (Happens at different times).

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