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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.
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.
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.
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.
Latin word order is relatively free. The verb may be found at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a sentence; an adjective may precede or follow its noun (vir bonus or bonus vir both mean 'a good man'); [5] and a genitive may precede or follow its noun ('the enemies' camp' can be both hostium castra and castra hostium; the latter is more common). [6]
As with the active perfect periphrastic, in a conditional sentence the perfect gerundive periphrastic tense can mean 'would have done': [10] sī ūnum diem morātī essētis, moriendum omnibus fuit (Livy) [11] 'if you had delayed just one day, you would all have died' Another meaning of the perfect passive is 'ought to have been done':
A difference from English grammar is that in open future conditions, it is usual in Latin to use one of the future tenses, when English has the present tense. [ 7 ] Apart from the types mentioned below it is also possible to have mixed conditionals, for example with different tenses in protasis and apodosis.
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.