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The Portuguese preterite has the same form as the Spanish preterite, but the meaning is like the "composed past" of French and Italian in that, for example, corri means both "I ran" and "I have run." As in other Romance languages, it is opposed to the pretérito imperfeito ( imperfect ).
The preterite and past participle forms of irregular verbs follow certain patterns. These include ending in -t (e.g. build, bend, send), stem changes (whether it is a vowel, such as in sit, win or hold, or a consonant, such as in teach and seek, that changes), or adding the [n] suffix to the past participle form (e.g. drive, show, rise ...
The imperfect (abbreviated IMPERF) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to walk". It contrasts with preterite forms, which refer to a single completed event in the past.
The preterite (Präteritum) (called the "imperfect" in older grammar books, but this, a borrowing from Latin terminology, ill describes it.) The perfect (Perfekt) The past perfect (Plusquamperfekt) In southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the preterite is mostly used solely in writing, for example in stories. Use in speech is regarded as ...
The difference between the preterite and the imperfect (and in certain cases, the perfect) is often hard to grasp for English speakers. English has just one past-tense form, which can have aspect added to it by auxiliary verbs, but not in ways that reliably correspond to what occurs in Spanish.
The preterite and the imperfect can be combined in the same sentence to express the occurrence of an event in one clause during an action or state expressed in another clause. For example: Ellos escuchaban la radio cuando oyeron un ruido afuera. (They were listening to the radio when they heard a noise outside.)
For example, bore and found may be past tenses of bear and find, but may also represent independent (regular) verbs of different meaning. Another example is lay , which may be the past tense of lie , but is also an independent verb (regular in pronunciation, but with irregular spelling: lay–laid–laid ).
Past (imperfect) subjunctive. Used interchangeably, the past (imperfect) subjunctive can end either in -se or -ra. Both forms stem from the third-person plural (ellos, ellas, ustedes) of the preterite. For example, the verb estar, when conjugated in the third-person plural of the preterite, becomes estuvieron.