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The word perfect in this sense means "completed" (from Latin perfectum, which is the perfect passive participle of the verb perficere "to complete"). In traditional Latin and Ancient Greek grammar, the perfect tense is a particular, conjugated -verb form. Modern analyses view the perfect constructions of these languages as combining elements of ...
Conditional sentence. Conditional sentences are natural language sentences that express that one thing is contingent on something else, e.g. "If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled." They are so called because the impact of the main clause of the sentence is conditional on the dependent clause. A full conditional thus contains two clauses: a ...
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 terms perfective and perfect should not be confused. A perfect tense (abbreviated PERF or PRF) is a grammatical form used to describe a past event with present relevance, or a present state resulting from a past situation. For example, "I have put it on the table" implies both that I put the object on the table and that it is still there ...
The conditional perfect is a grammatical construction that combines the conditional mood with perfect aspect.A typical example is the English would have written. [1] The conditional perfect is used to refer to a hypothetical, usually counterfactual, event or circumstance placed in the past, contingent on some other circumstance (again normally counterfactual, and also usually placed in the past).
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]
The present perfect tense is illustrated by I've left it somewhere; the past perfect (also called the preterite perfect) tense by I'd left it somewhere.: 140–141 A full description of their uses is necessarily complex: the discussion in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is long and intricate.: 139–148
A related, and more complex, tense is the future perfect in the past, which is also known as the conditional perfect. Here, an event is situated before a reference point, which in turn is in the future relative to another point in the past: John left for the front; by the time he should return, the fields would have been burnt to stubble.