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Butt and Benjamin provide a number of common combinations of tenses: if the main clause is in the present tense, one has to use the present subjunctive for the dependent clause, but the present perfect subjunctive if the comment made is about a past event – the imperfect subjunctive may be used as well, replacing the latter; if the main ...
Spanish does not usually employ such a structure in simple sentences. The translations of sentences like these can be readily analyzed as being normal sentences containing relative pronouns. Spanish is capable of expressing such concepts without a special cleft structure thanks to its flexible word order.
The preterite and the perfect are distinguished in a similar way as the equivalent English tenses. Generally, whenever the present perfect ("I have done") is used in English, the perfect is also used in Spanish. In addition, there are cases in which English uses a simple past ("I did") but Spanish requires a perfect.
The tables include only the "simple" tenses (that is, those formed with a single word), and not the "compound" tenses (those formed with an auxiliary verb plus a non-finite form of the main verb), such as the progressive, perfect, and passive voice.
In English, completed actions in many contexts are referred to using the simple past verb form rather than the present perfect. English also has a present perfect continuous (or present perfect progressive) form, which combines present tense with both perfect aspect and continuous (progressive) aspect: "I have been eating". The action is not ...
[18]: p.76 The indicative mood has simple forms (one word, but conjugated by person and number) for the present tense, the imperfective aspect in the past tense, the perfective aspect in the past, and the future (and the future form can also be used to express present probability, as in the English "It will be raining now").
An auxiliary verb (abbreviated aux) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a participle, which respectively provide the main semantic content of the clause. [1]
An example sentence is El padre se enojó al ver a su hijo romper la lámpara. The English translation is "The father became angry upon seeing his son break the lamp." The verb se enojó is said to be mediopassive because it comprises the reflexive pronoun se and the simple verb enojó, which together literally mean "angered himself." This ...