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In Latin, represented events and states may be related to the time of another event in discourse, which in turn has a primary tense. Such events are said to have a secondary tense, of which there are three in Latin: namely, secondary future, secondary present and secondary past, each of which is described in a separate section below.
From a semantic perspective, a tense is a temporal circumstance in which an event takes place relative to a given point in time. [i] [ii] [iii] It is absolute (primary) if it relates the represented event to the time of the speech event [iv] [v] [vi] [vii] and it is relative if it relates the represented event to the time of another event in the context of discourse.
The main Latin tenses can be divided into two groups: the present system (also known as infectum tenses), consisting of the present, future, and imperfect; and the perfect system (also known as perfectum tenses), consisting of the perfect, future perfect, and pluperfect.
Examples of 'infinitive' dependent clauses - secondary future Inner Meaning Outer Meaning Paradigm Latin example English translation Comment relative future future in present 'present infinitive of periphrastic future' cōnfīdō, tē factūrum esse omnia (Cicero) [4] 'I believe in you that you will do everything' [the fact] that x will do in ...
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 ...
This tense can also be used in primary sequence reported speech, to represent the main clause in either an ideal conditional sentence or a simple future one (the distinction between these two disappears in indirect speech): [155]
Latin is a heavily inflected language with largely free word order. Nouns are inflected for number and case; pronouns and adjectives (including participles) are inflected for number, case, and gender; and verbs are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, voice, and mood.
The passive tenses also have feminine and neuter forms, e.g. amāta est "she was loved", nūntiātum est "it was announced". Forms made with fuī instead of sum and forem instead of essem are also found, for example amātus fuī, amātus fuerō, amātus forem and so on, but these are not common in classical Latin. See Latin tenses.