Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
A typical English verb may have five different inflected forms: The base form or plain form (go, write, climb), which has several uses—as an infinitive, imperative, present subjunctive, and present indicative except in the third-person singular. The -s form (goes, writes, climbs), used as the present indicative in the third-person singular.
Perfective aspect. The perfective aspect (abbreviated PFV), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, [1] is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole, i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the imperfective aspect, which presents an event as having internal structure ...
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 ...
Prophetic perfect tense. The prophetic perfect tense is a literary technique commonly used in religious texts, [1] which describes future events that are so certain to happen that they are referred to in the past tense as if they had already happened. [2]
t. e. The Ancient Greek participle is a non-finite nominal verb form declined for gender, number and case (thus, it is a verbal adjective) and has many functions in Ancient Greek. It can be active, middle or passive and can be used in the present, future, aorist and perfect tense; these tenses normally represent not absolute time but only time ...
Weak verbs form the past tense by adding endings with -d-in them (sometimes -t-) to the stem. In Modern English, these endings have merged as -ed, forming the past tense for most verbs, such as love, loved and look, looked. Weak verbs already make up the vast majority of verbs in Old English. There are two major types: class I and class II.
In linguistics, the prospective aspect (abbreviated PROSP or PRSP) is a grammatical aspect describing an event that occurs subsequent to a given reference time. [1] One way to view tenses in English and many other languages is as a combination of a reference time (past, present, or future) in which a situation takes place, and the time of a particular event relative to the reference time ...