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See explanation. A tense is imperfect if it is used to describe an unfinished action. In English all continuous (also called progressive) tenses are imperfect ones. Past Continuous Example: John was eating breakfast when the telephone rang An action described by was eating is unfinished so the tense is imperfect. Present Continuous Example: What are you reading? The sentence tells about an ...
The Imperfect tense refers to an event in the past that repeats or is continuing. [Compare this with the Simple Past ( Past Perfect or Preterit), which indicates a completed action.] The Imperfect doesn't specify whether you're talking about the beginning of the action, the middle or the end. In English, the Imperfect needs what's called a verbal periphrasis (a phrase) to indicate that the ...
Yes. Perfect tense uses the word 'have' before the past participle, while imperfect uses only the imperfect conjugation. The perfect tense uses an auxiliary verb and the past participle, while the imperfect tense uses only the imperfect conjugation of the verb. For example, Perf: 'I have been' Imperf: 'I was' Here 'have' is the auxiliary verb and 'been' is the past participle. 'Been' is also ...
It comes from Latin. In Latin, "perfect" means completed. An example of the perfect tense is: I have read the book. The action is complete in regards to present. An example of the imperfect tense is: I was reading the book when the phone rang. The action here is incomplete. That does not mean that the speaker did not finish the book. It just means that at the time the speaker is describing ...
The perfect tense indicates that an action was/is/will be completed before some other action. The pluperfect indicates that the action was completed before some other action in the past. The pluperfect (sometimes called the past perfect) is a perfect verb tense form describing an action completed before some other past action. Examples: Pluperfect/Past Perfect We had washed the dishes before ...
The imperfect tense is used to indicate a continuing or repeated action that occurred in the past. The imperfect tense is typically formed using the present participle (the -ing form of verb) prefixed by "was" or "had been"; however it may be formed using "used to" or something similar with the simple present tense. Examples: I was weeding the garden while my sister watched TV. Until the day ...
Probably I chose the wrong definition, but in Italian imperfect is used to express a regular action in the past. I knew it was not possible to abbreviate it, with this meaning. This is what Ragazzini says:
See explanation. An imperfect tense is used to indicate that the action may not be completed. Example: If you say: "I was reading a book.", we do not actually now if you finnished the book or not. We cannot decide if the action is finnished or not, hence this sentence is imperfect. The perfect equivalent would be I have read a book." This sentence informs us about completing the action, hence ...
I believe that the imperfect is used for repeated habitual actions in Spanish and the preterite is used for a specific time in the past. My question in this thread is whether the Spanish conditional is used in reference to habitual actions in the past like in English or rather that the Spanish employ the imperfect where one might use the ...
Basically, you use the preterite tense in Spanish when you want to refer to an action in the past that is seen as completed. On the other hand, you use the imperfect tense when you want to stress the incomplete nature of the action. Let's take for intance: - Pablo habló con María.