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.
56-838: The imperfect , or past imperfective , is a verb form in linguistics. Imperfect or imperfection or imperfectionist may also refer to: Imperfect Traditionally, the imperfect of languages such as Latin and French is referred to as one of the tenses, although it actually encodes aspectual information in addition to tense (time reference). It may be more precisely called past imperfective . English has no general imperfective and expresses it in different ways. The term "imperfect" in English refers to forms much more commonly called past progressive or past continuous (e.g. "was doing" or "were doing"). These are combinations of past tense with specifically continuous or progressive aspect. In German, Imperfekt formerly referred to
112-400: A past perfect progressive (or past perfect continuous ) construction, such as had been working . This is the past equivalent of the present perfect progressive , and is used to refer to an ongoing action that continued up to the past time of reference. For example: "It had been raining all night when he awoke." It is also commonly used to refer to actions that had led to consequences in
168-428: A past time had already been started (but not necessarily completed), (e.g. "It had already been raining for a week when the big storm started."). Bernard Comrie classifies the pluperfect as an absolute-relative tense , because it absolutely (not by context) establishes a deixis (the past event) and places the action relative to the deixis (before it). Examples of the English pluperfect (past perfect) are found in
224-424: A pluperfect form (called ὑπερσυντέλικος , "more than completed"). An example is ἐτεθύκει , "had sacrificed" – compare the perfect τέθυκε , "has sacrificed". Modern Greek uses auxiliaries to form the pluperfect; examples are given in the table at the end of this article. In Latin , the pluperfect ( plus quam perfectum ) is formed without an auxiliary verb in the active voice , and with an auxiliary verb plus
280-461: A slightly different word order, and is formed with the preterite form of ha ( have in English), i.e. hade ( had in English), plus the supine form of the main verb: När jag kom dit hade han gått hem - When I arrived there he had gone home . In Korean the pluperfect is formed by adding an additional "었". "었" is a morpheme that is analogous to the suffix "ed" in English, in that it
336-449: A synthetic pluperfect ( mais-que-perfeito or antepretérito ) has been conserved from Latin. For example, Quando cheguei, soube que o meu amigo morrera , 'When I came, I found out that my friend had died'. In Portuguese, however, its use has become mostly literary, and particularly in spoken communication, the pluperfect is usually formed using the auxiliary verb ter , in the imperfect form (tinha tinhas tinha tínhamos tínheis tinham) plus
392-553: A vedea 'to see'. Technically, this form is obtained from the singular third person form of the simple perfect tense by adding specific terminations for each person and number. However, in northern Transylvania there is a regional way to state the pluperfect (that may reflect the German influence). The pluperfect is expressed by combining the auxiliary verb fost or the short version fo ' (= "was" in English or "war" in German) with
448-450: Is "past tense", in reference of it being a second past tense that exists along the regular one). Same as with them, in formal usage "ti" and "vós/vosoutros" change to "vostede" and "vostedes" and are followed by the third person. In verbs ended in -aer , -oer , -aír and -oír , the first and second person of the plural show the presence of a diaeresis . Hindi , an Indo-Aryan language , has indicative imperfect tense conjugation only for
504-512: Is also used to form the simple past tense. Thus In some of the Slavic languages the pluperfect has fallen out of use or is rarely used; pluperfect meaning is often expressed using the ordinary past tense, with some adverb (such as "earlier") or other periphrastic construction to indicate prior occurrence. Ukrainian and Belarusian preserve a distinct pluperfect ( давньоминулий час or запрошлы час – davńomynulyj čas or zaprošły čas ) that
560-551: Is an additional way to construct a pluperfect by doubling the perfect tense particles. This is called doubled perfect ( doppeltes Perfekt ) or super perfect ( Superperfekt ) in German and plus past perfect ( temps surcomposé ) in French. These forms are not commonly used in written language and they are not taught in school. Both languages allow to construct a past tense with a modal verb (like English "to have", in German "haben", in French "avoir"), for example "I have heard it". This
616-539: Is considered archaic and is rarely used even in literary language. In Polish pluperfect is only found in texts written in or imitating Old Polish, when it was formed with past (perfect) tense of być "to be" and past participle of the main verb. The person marking is movable, e.g. zrobił byłem ~ zrobiłem był "I had done". Past tense of the adjectival verbs ( powinienem był zrobić "I should have done") and conditional mood ( zrobiłbym był "I would have done") are often wrongly considered pluperfect forms – morphologically,
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#1732791575078672-522: Is expressed without any auxiliary words, using a particular form of the verb, originated in the Latin pluperfect subjunctive (compare Italian imperfect subjunctive Sembrava che Elsa non venisse with Romanian pluperfect Părea că Elsa nu venise ). For example, in Când l-am întrebat, el văzuse deja filmul 'When I asked him, he had already seen the movie'. The verb văzuse is in the pluperfect form of
728-598: Is formed by preceding the verb with buv / bula in Ukrainian and byŭ / była in Belarusian (literally, 'was'). It was and still is used in daily speech, especially in rural areas. Being mostly unused in literature during Soviet times, it is now regaining popularity. Here is an example of usage: Ja vže buv pіšov, až raptom zhadav... (Ukrainian) and Ja ŭžo byŭ pajšoŭ, kali raptam zhadaŭ (Belarusian) I almost had gone already when I recalled... In Slovenian ,
784-440: Is itself a past event, referred to using the past tense ( found ). The pluperfect is needed to make it clear that the first event (the thinking and the supposed reaching) is placed even earlier in the past. Some languages, like Latin , make pluperfects purely by inflecting the verb, whereas most modern European languages do so using appropriate auxiliary verbs in combination with past participles . Ancient Greek verbs had
840-551: Is largely equivalent to the usage in English. The additional perfect tense is constructed by putting the modal verb ("to have") in the past tense as if being the full verb ("I have had") followed by the actual verb in the past particle mode ("I have had heard it"). The same applies to those verbs which require "to be" (German "sein", French "être") as the modal verb for the construction of the past tense (which would not work in English). In spoken language in Southern Germany
896-637: Is only one periphrastic tense which functions as both the present progressive and present perfect with reference to the setting in which is placed. বুলিছোঁ bulisü͂ বুলিছোঁ bulisü͂ বুলিছ buliso বুলিছ buliso বুলিছা bulisa বুলিছা bulisa বুলিছে bulise বুলিছে bulise বুলিছিলোঁ bulisilü͂ 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
952-404: Is rarely used now. In Italian , there are two pluperfects in the indicative mood: the recent pluperfect ( trapassato prossimo ) and the remote pluperfect ( trapassato remoto ). The recent pluperfect is formed correspondingly to French by using the imperfect of the appropriate auxiliary verb ( essere or avere ) plus the past participle. For example, Ero affamato perché non avevo mangiato I
1008-432: Is sometimes used in relation to the grammar of other languages.) English also has a past perfect progressive (or past perfect continuous ) form: "had been writing". The pluperfect is traditionally described as a tense ; in modern linguistic terminology it may be said to combine tense with grammatical aspect ; namely past tense (reference to past time) and perfect aspect . It is used to refer to an occurrence that at
1064-427: Is used to express the ideas of habitual actions or states of being; physical and emotional descriptions: time, weather, age, feelings; actions or states of an unspecified duration; background information in conjunction with the passé composé; wishes or suggestions; conditions in "si" clauses; the expressions "être en train de" and "venir de" in the past. Conjugation of the imperfect indicative: Notes: Conjugation of
1120-433: The imperfect of the auxiliary verb haber plus the past participle, the latter is formed with the simple past of haber plus the past participle. For example, in pluperfect Había comido cuando mi madre vino 'I had eaten when my mother came', but in pretérito anterior Hube comido cuando mi madre vino 'I had eaten when my mother would come'. This last form however is rarely used. Sometimes (specially in journalism)
1176-441: The past participle of the main verb, as in had jumped or had written , often used in its contracted form ' d , as in I'd jumped . It is commonly called the past perfect, being a combination of perfect aspect (marked by the use of the have auxiliary with the past participle) and past tense (marked by the use of the past tense of that auxiliary, had ). It is one of a number of analogously formed perfect constructions, such as
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#17327915750781232-403: The present perfect ("have/has jumped"), future perfect ("will have jumped") and conditional perfect ("would have jumped"). Unlike the present perfect, the past perfect can readily be used with an adverb specifying a past time frame for the occurrence. For example, it is incorrect to say * I have done it last Friday (the use of last Friday , specifying the past time, would entail the use of
1288-403: The simple past tense is used instead: "He was hungry"; "We knew what to do next." Habitual (repeated) action in the past can be marked by used to , as in "I used to eat a lot", or by the auxiliary verb would , as in "Back then, I would eat early and would walk to school." (The auxiliary would also has other uses, such as expressing conditional mood .) However, in many cases
1344-436: The simple past , I did it , rather than the present perfect). However, there is no such objection to a sentence like I had done it last Friday , where the past perfect is accompanied by a specification of the time of occurrence, especially in a context that clearly provides for a connection with another past event, either specified (as in I hadn't met him then. ) or implied (as in I hadn't expected that. ). English also has
1400-524: The Portuguese imperfect. Like in Italian, it is also commonly formed by combining the imperfect of the verb estar (estava, estavas, estava, estávamos, estáveis, estavam) with the gerund (for example, "falando", the gerund form of "falar", to speak, to talk). In Brazilian Portuguese, both in informal oral speech and informal written language (for example, online or phone texting), it is more common to use
1456-419: The appropriate ending (the forms for être (to be), whose "nous" form does not end in -ons , are irregular; they start with ét- but have the same endings). Verbs that terminate in a stem of -cer and -ger undergo minor orthographic changes to preserve the phonetic sound or allophone. Verbs whose root terminates in the letter "i" maintain the letter despite the consecutiveness in the "nous" and "vous" forms. It
1512-473: The composite "estava falando" (commonly reduced to "tava falando"), than to use the synthetic "falava", which is more common in formal written forms. Both in European and Brazilian Portuguese, the synthetic pluperfect ("eu falara" "I had spoken") is considered old-fashioned and never used in spoken communication – it is substituted by the composite "eu tinha falado", which is formed with the imperfect form of
1568-606: The doubled perfect construction sometimes replaces the Standard German pluperfect construction. In France it is uncommon in the Northern regions (with Parisian influence) but it can be found widely in Provençal dialects as well as in other regions around the world. In all regions the doubled pluperfect ("I had had heard it") is uncommon although it is possible - all of these forms emphasize the perfect aspect by extending
1624-399: The event is continuous or habitual. For a continuous action (one that was in progress at a particular time in the past), the past progressive (past continuous) form is used, as in "I was eating "; "They were running fast." However certain verbs that express state rather than action do not mark the progressive aspect (see Uses of English verb forms § Progressive ); in these cases
1680-540: The following sentence (from Viktor Frankl 's Man's Search for Meaning ): A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely. Here, "had thought" and "had reached" are examples of the pluperfect. They refer to an event (a man thinking he has reached the limit of his capacity to suffer), which takes place before another event (the man finding that his capacity to suffer has no limit), that
1736-496: The game began; "they had been writing " when the bell rang. The word derives from the Latin plus quam perfectum , "more than perfect". The word "perfect" in this sense means "completed"; it contrasts with the "imperfect", which denotes uncompleted actions or states. In English grammar , the pluperfect (e.g. "had written") is now usually called the past perfect, since it combines past tense with perfect aspect . (The same term
Imperfect (disambiguation) - Misplaced Pages Continue
1792-406: The habitual nature of the action does not need to be explicitly marked on the verb, and the simple past is used: "We always ate dinner at six o'clock." Conjugation of the imperfect indicative: Notes: In Romance languages , the imperfect is generally a past tense. Its uses include representing: A common mistake of beginners learning a Romance language is putting too much emphasis on whether
1848-495: The imperfect indicative: Notes: In Spanish, the imperfect can be called the imperfecto or the copretérito . Conjugation of the imperfect indicative: In Portuguese, the imperfect indicative, called "pretérito imperfeito", is quite similar to Spanish: There are four irregular verbs: "pôr" (to put), "ser" (to be), "ter" (to have) and "vir" (to come). Unlike in Spanish, the verbs "ver" (to see) and "ir" (to go) are regular in
1904-483: The imperfect subjunctive with '-ar' termination can be used with a pluperfect sense in subordinated phrases, but it is neither normative nor recommended. In Dutch , the pluperfect ( voltooid verleden tijd ) is formed similarly as in German: the past participle ( voltooid deelwoord ) is combined with the past-tense form of the auxiliary verb hebben or zijn , depending on the full lexical verb: Voordat ik er erg in had,
1960-609: The imperfect subjunctive. It has a similar form to the Portuguese, thus, the Portuguese example below, in Judeo-Spanish, is: Kuando yegí suve ke mi haver morera , 'When I came I knew that my friend had died'. It remains the main spoken form, though in some varieties, similarly to Spanish or Portuguese, the pluperfect is formed using the auxiliary verbs tener or aver plus the past participle. For example, Kuando yegí suve ke mi haver tuve morido or Kuando yegí suve ke mi haver avía morido . In Portuguese and Galician ,
2016-474: The latter is actually past conditional, rarely used in modern Polish. In Serbo-Croatian , the pluperfect ("pluskvamperfekt") is constructed with the past tense ("perfekt") of the verb to be ("biti") plus the adjective form of the main verb. Alternatively, it can be formed by using the imperfect ("imperfekt") of "biti" with the past participle of the main verb. For example: "Ja sam bio učio" (or: "Ja bijah učio"), which means, "I had been studying". In Bulgarian ,
2072-427: The merchant, the buyer left." In French , the indicative pluperfect ( Plus-que-parfait , "more than perfect") is formed by taking the appropriate form of the imperfect indicative of the auxiliaries avoir or être and adding the past participle, j'avais mangé . Another type of pluperfect ( passé antérieur , "past anterior") can be formed with the appropriate simple past form of the auxiliary: j'eus mangé , though it
2128-425: The modal verb in the preterite or the auxiliary ( haben for all modals): There is a drastic shift of meaning between these variants: the first sentences denote that it "had been necessary" to rain in the past. The second sentence denotes that the speaker assumed that it had rained. In standard Swedish , the pluperfect ( pluskvamperfekt ) is similar to the pluperfect in a number of other Germanic languages, but with
2184-422: The other hand, the sentence " I used to have fun in the 1960s. " is a good candidate for the imperfect, even though its period is known. In short, knowing when an action occurred is not nearly as important as how long it occurred (or was and still is occurring). To form the imperfect for French regular verbs, take the first person plural present tense, the "nous" (we) form, subtract the -ons suffix, and add
2240-411: The participle, which (quite difficult to explain) is stated in its feminine form. Examples: o fost foastă (or o fo' foastă ) = he had been; am fost văzută = I had seen; or fost venită = they had come. In Spanish , there are also two pluperfects, being the pluperfect proper ( pluscuamperfecto , or antecopretérito ) and the so called pretérito anterior (or antepretérito ). While the former uses
2296-454: The past (as in I was sleepy because I'd been working all night. ). The past perfect form also has some uses in which it does not directly refer to an actual past event. These are generally in condition clauses and some other dependent clauses referring to hypothetical circumstances (as in "If I'd known about that, I wouldn't have asked."), as well as certain expressions of wish (as in "I wish I hadn't been so stupid back then."). In German ,
Imperfect (disambiguation) - Misplaced Pages Continue
2352-459: The past participle. For example, Quando cheguei, soube que o meu amigo tinha morrido . A more formal way of expressing the pluperfect uses the verb "haver". For example: Quando cheguei, soube que o meu amigo havia morrido . This periphrastic construction is not permitted in Galician, so Galician uses the synthetic pluperfect exclusively. In Romanian , the pluperfect ( mai mult ca perfect )
2408-422: The past. (I.e. "After I used to find it, I would sell it" OR "After I would find it, I would sell it"). The first example, being the preterite, refers only to actions completed once in the remote past, or distant past. In Judeo-Spanish , the Latin pluperfect forms with little alteration have been preserved (e.g. final /m/ and /t/ are dropped) to express this tense ( pluskuamperfekto ), which is identical in form to
2464-479: The perfect passive participle in the passive voice . For example, in the indicative mood : The subjunctive mood is formed similarly (in this case dedisset and data esset respectively). In many cases an ablative absolute phrase, consisting of a noun and perfect participle in the ablative case, may be used in place of a pluperfect; for example: Pecuniis mercatori datis, cessit emptor , "When money had been given (more literally: Money having been given) to
2520-442: The pluperfect ( минало предварително време ) is formed with the imperfect tense of the auxiliary verb съм (to be) and the perfect active participle of the main verb. In Welsh , the pluperfect is formed without an auxiliary verb, usually by interpolating -as- before the simple past ending: parhasem , "we had remained". In Irish , perfect forms are constructed using the idea of being (or having been) after doing something. In
2576-490: The pluperfect ( Plusquamperfekt , Präteritumperfekt , or Vorvergangenheit , lit. pre-past ) is used in much the same manner, normally in a nachdem sentence. The Plusquamperfekt is formed with the Partizip Perfekt ( Partizip II) of the full lexical verb, plus the auxiliary verb haben or sein in its preterite form, depending on the full lexical verb in question. When using modal verbs, one can use either
2632-484: The pluperfect ( predpreteklik , 'before the past') is formed with the verb 'to be' ( biti ) in past tense and the participle of the main verb. It is used to denote a completed action in the past before another action ( Pred nekaj leti so bile vode poplavile vsa nabrežja Savinje , 'A few years ago, all the banks of Savinja River had been flooded) or, with a modal verb , a past event that should have happened ( Moral bi ti bil povedati , 'I should have told you'). Its use
2688-556: The pluperfect, bhíomar tar éis imeacht , "we had gone", literally, "we were after going". In Finnish , the pluperfect ( pluskvamperfekti ) is constructed with an auxiliary verb olla 'to be', which is in the past tense. The primary verbs get the past participle endings -nyt/-nut in singular, -neet in plural forms (the 'n' assimilates with certain consonants) and -ttu/-tty/-tu/-ty in passive forms. میں نے سنا تھا تم نے سنا تھا اس نے سنا تھا ہم نے سنا تھا آپ نے سنا تھا انہوں نے سنا تھا In German and French there
2744-438: The plural imperfect form (थे thē) in masculine gender but singular form (थी thī ) in feminine gender. These imperfect conjugations also act as copula to form the imperfect past forms for the three grammatical aspects that Hindi hasː Habitual , Perfective , and Progressive aspects. In Assamese , two imperfect forms are recognisedː present progressive and/or present perfect & past progressive and/or remote past. There
2800-435: The pronoun itself. So, the grammatically singular pronouns (e.g., मैं ma͠i "I" and तू tū "you" etc.) are assigned the singular imperfect forms (i.e. था thā or थी thī ) depending on the gender of the person or the noun they refer to, and the grammatically plural pronouns (e.g. हम ham "we" etc.) are assigned the plural imperfect forms (थे thē and थीं thīm̊ ). An exception to this is the pronoun तुम ( tum ) which takes in
2856-654: The simply conjugated past tense (to contrast with the Perfekt or compound past form), but the term Präteritum (preterite) is now preferred, since the form does not carry any implication of imperfective aspect. "Imperfect" comes from the Latin imperfectus "unfinished", because the imperfect expresses an ongoing, uncompleted action. The equivalent Ancient Greek term was paratatikós "prolonged". Bavarian does not have Imperfect. Imperfect meanings in English are expressed in different ways depending on whether
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#17327915750782912-413: The time the action occurred is known. This generally does not affect how the imperfect is used. For example, the sentence " Someone ate all of my cookies. " (when translated) is not a good candidate for the imperfect. Fundamentally, it is no different from the sentence " We ate all the cookies. " Note this fails the repeatability requirement of the imperfect, as it is only known to have happened once. On
2968-452: The verb "ter" (to have) (tinha tinhas tinha tínhamos tínheis tinham) plus the past participle ("falado"). Alternatively, the verb "ter" can be swapped with the imperfect form of the verb "haver" (to have) (havia havias havia haviamos havíeis haviam) Similar to the closely related Portuguese, as well as to Spanish, but often called "copretérito" (from co- , same particle found in English "collaboration" and "coexistence", plus "pretérito", which
3024-460: The verb होना ( honā ) [to be] and the rest of the verbs lack this conjugation. The indicative imperfect forms of होना (honā) comes from Sanskrit स्थित (stʰita) "standing, situated" which are derived from the PIE root * steh ₂- (“to stand”). The imperfect conjugation is derived from a participle form and hence its conjugations agree only with the number and gender of the grammatical person and not
3080-409: Was het al twaalf uur geworden . - Before I noticed, it had become noon already . In addition, pluperfect is sometimes used instead of present perfect: Dat had ik al gezien (voordat jij het zag) - lit.: I had seen that (before you did) . The parenthesized part is implied and, therefore, can be omitted. In English grammar , the pluperfect is formed by combining the auxiliary verb had with
3136-404: Was hungry because I had not eaten. The remote pluperfect is formed by using the preterite of the appropriate auxiliary verb plus the past participle. In the Italian consecutio temporum, the trapassato remoto should be used for completed actions in a clause subjugated to a clause whose verb is in the preterite. The second example may refer to an event that happened continuously or habitually in
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