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In English grammar, the pluperfect (e.g. "had written") is now usually called the past perfect, since it combines past tense with perfect aspect. (The same term is sometimes used in relation to the grammar of other languages.) English also has a past perfect progressive (or past perfect continuous) form: "had been writing".
The German "present perfect" construction is called the Perfekt (perfect), and for most verbs is the usual past tense for colloquial speech and dialects. For details, see German verbs . Other Germanic languages have similar constructions, such as the perfekt of Swedish and the perfectum (compound past) of Dutch .
Imperfect tense verbs represent a past process combined with so called imperfective aspect, that is, they often stand for an ongoing past action or state at a past point in time (see secondary present) or represent habitual actions (see Latin tenses with modality) (e.g. 'he was eating', 'he used to eat'). The perfect tense combines the meanings ...
The verb be has two past tense forms: was (first and third person singular) and were (plural and second person). The past tense (preterite) form is used in what is called the simple past, in sentences such as We lit the fire and He liked to dance. One of the uses of this tense is to refer not to a past situation, but to a hypothetical (present ...
The past perfect, sometimes called the pluperfect, combines past tense with perfect aspect; it is formed by combining had (the past tense of the auxiliary have) with the past participle of the main verb. It is used when referring to an event that took place prior to the time frame being considered. [10]
In the active voice only two verbs (τεθνήξω (tethnḗxō) "I will be dead" and ἑστήξω (hestḗxō) "I will be standing") have a separate form for the future perfect tense, [93] though a compound ("periphrastic") tense can be made with a perfect participle, e.g ἐγνωκὼς ἔσται (egnōkṑs éstai) [94] "he is going to ...
In Latin, the sequence of tenses rule affects dependent verbs in the subjunctive mood, mainly in indirect questions, indirect commands, and purpose clauses. [4] If the main verb is in one of the non-past tenses, the subordinate verb is usually in the present or perfect subjunctive (primary sequence); if the main verb is in one of the past tenses, the subordinate verb is usually in the ...
The periphrasis for the perfectum passive tenses is made of a passive perfect participle (ductus, ducta, ductum, ductī, ductae, ducta, which changes according to the gender and number of the subject) combined with different tenses of the verb sum 'I am'. The forms in brackets were rare in Classical Latin, but became more common in post ...