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The preterite and the perfect are distinguished in a similar way as the equivalent English tenses. Generally, whenever the present perfect ("I have done") is used in English, the perfect is also used in Spanish. In addition, there are cases in which English uses a simple past ("I did") but Spanish requires a perfect.
Spanish language. Spanish is a grammatically inflected language, which means that many words are modified ("marked") in small ways, usually at the end, according to their changing functions. Verbs are marked for tense, aspect, mood, person, and number (resulting in up to fifty conjugated forms per verb).
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.
Pluperfect. The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect ), usually called past perfect in English, characterizes certain verb forms and grammatical tenses involving an action from an antecedent point in time. Examples in English are: "we had arrived " before the game began; "they had been writing " when the bell rang.
The present perfect is a grammatical combination of the present tense and perfect aspect that is used to express a past event that has present consequences. [ 1] The term is used particularly in the context of English grammar to refer to forms like "I have finished". The forms are present because they use the present tense of the auxiliary verb ...
Perfective aspect. The perfective aspect ( abbreviated PFV ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, [1] is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole, i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imperfective aspect, which presents an event as having internal structure ...
Busch (2017, p. 146) There has been disagreement among linguists as to how the subjunctive mood should be defined. In the view of Spanish linguist Emilio Alarcos Llorach, it indicates the fictitious or unreal nature of the verbal root from which a form conjugated in this mood derives. He adds that the subjunctive is the marked form of the indicative. Another linguist, María Ángeles Sastre ...
Participle. In linguistics, a participle (from Latin participium 'a sharing, partaking'; abbr. PTCP) is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. [ 1] More narrowly, participle has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adjective, as in a laughing face ".