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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.
evening sedn-eshe sit. PFV - PST. IPFV na on chardak-a veranda- DEF vecher sedn-eshe na chardak-a evening sit.PFV-PST.IPFV on veranda-DEF In the evening, he would sit down on the veranda. Here each sitting is an unanalyzed whole, a simple event, so the perfective root of the verb sedn 'sat' is used. However, the clause as a whole describes an ongoing event conceived of as having internal ...
For example, the English verbs "to know" (the state of knowing) and "to find out" (knowing viewed as a "completed action") correspond to the imperfect and perfect forms of the equivalent verbs in French and Spanish, savoir and saber. This is also true when the sense of verb "to know" is "to know somebody", in this case opposed in aspect to the ...
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 ...
Other verb forms used in Ancient Greek to refer to past circumstances were the aorist, which was used simply to report past events (for example in narrative), and the imperfect. For details of the formation and use of the Greek perfect, see Ancient Greek verbs (see also Ancient Greek grammar § Dependence of moods and tenses ).
Classical and Standard Arabic verbs conjugate for at least three distinct moods in the imperfect: indicative, subjunctive and jussive. [ 2 ] The jussive is used after the preposition li- ( ليـ- , 'to') to express a command to a third person.
Verbs with a contracted infinitive, such as dire (short for dicere) revert to the longer form in the imperfect subjunctive (to give dicessi etc., for example). The imperfect subjunctive is used in subordinate clauses taking the subjunctive where the sense of the verb requires the imperfect. English: "It seemed that Elsa was not coming."
English irregular verbs are now a closed group, which means that newly formed verbs are always regular and do not adopt any of the irregular patterns. This list only contains verb forms which are listed in the major dictionaries as being standard usage in modern English. There are also many thousands of archaic, non-standard and dialect variants.