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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 ...
The future perfect is a verb form or construction used to describe an event that is expected or planned to happen before a time of reference in the future, such as will have finished in the English sentence "I will have finished by tomorrow." It is a grammatical combination of the future tense, or other marking of future time, and the perfect ...
The use of tenses is quite similar to English: In implicative conditional sentences, the present tense (or other appropriate tense, mood, etc.) is used in both clauses. In predictive conditional sentences, the future tense or imperative generally appears in the main clause, but the condition clause is formed with the present tense (as in English).
v. t. e. Ancient Greek verbs have four moods ( indicative, imperative, subjunctive and optative ), three voices ( active, middle and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second and third) and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). In the indicative mood there are seven tenses: present, imperfect, future, aorist (the equivalent of ...
e. In linguistics, conjugation ( / ˌkɒndʒʊˈɡeɪʃən / [ 1][ 2]) is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (alteration of form according to rules of grammar ). For instance, the verb break can be conjugated to form the words break, breaks, broke, broken and breaking. While English has a relatively ...
The first English grammar, Bref Grammar for English by William Bullokar, published in 1586, does not use the term "auxiliary" but says: All other verbs are called verbs-neuters-un-perfect because they require the infinitive mood of another verb to express their signification of meaning perfectly: and be these, may, can, might or mought, could, would, should, must, ought, and sometimes, will ...
The present perfect may also be used with future reference, instead of the future perfect, in those dependent clauses where future occurrence is denoted by present tense (see § Dependent clauses below). For example: When you have written it, show it to me. For the possibility of a present perfect subjunctive, see English subjunctive.
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.