Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The progressive aspects (also called "continuous tenses") are formed by using the appropriate tense of estar + present participle (gerundio), and the perfect constructions are formed by using the appropriate tense of haber + past participle (participio). When the past participle is used in this way, it invariably ends with -o.
When the past participle appears with estar, it forms a "passive of result" or "stative passive" ("El libro ya está escrito"/"The book is already written"—see Spanish conjugation). Location of a person or thing is expressed with estar —regardless of whether temporary or permanent ("El hotel está en la esquina"/"The hotel is on the corner").
The present progressive is formed by first conjugating the verb estar or seguir, depending on context, to agree with the subject, and then attaching a gerund of the verb that follows. The past (imperfect) progressive simply requires the estar or seguir to be conjugated, depending on context, in imperfect, with respect to the subject.
Spanish verbs are a complex area of Spanish grammar, with many combinations of tenses, aspects and moods (up to fifty conjugated forms per verb).Although conjugation rules are relatively straightforward, a large number of verbs are irregular.
The progressive aspect in English likely arose from two constructions that were used fairly rarely in Old and Early Middle English. The first used a form of beon/wesan (to be/to become) with a present participle (-ende). [8] This construction has an analogous form in Dutch (see below). [9]
In the Spanish language there are some verbs with irregular past participles. There are also verbs with both regular and irregular participles, in which the irregular form is most used as an adjective , while the regular form tends to appear after haber to form compound perfect tenses.
The conjugations of the indicative perfect past and the indicative imperfect past are derived from participles (just like the past tense formation in Slavic languages) and hence they agree with the grammatical number and the gender of noun which the pronoun refers to and not the pronoun itself. The perfect past doubles as the perfective aspect ...
Butt and Benjamin provide a number of common combinations of tenses: if the main clause is in the present tense, one has to use the present subjunctive for the dependent clause, but the present perfect subjunctive if the comment made is about a past event – the imperfect subjunctive may be used as well, replacing the latter; if the main ...