Apart from the present tense of all the conjugations, two other tenses have been discussed in earlier posts:
[i] the imperfect tense
[ii] the future tense
Here, we’ll look again
at the imperfect tense and how it is used.
The word ‘imperfect’ in
everyday English suggests that something has not been done well, but its
original meaning – from Latin – is ‘un│finished’: im│perfectum.
French and German have
imperfect tenses: j’allais; ich ging. Russian uses an imperfective aspect in
its verbs.
English does not have a
single separate imperfect tense but uses a variety of constructions to convey
the following ideas:
[1] I was walking along
the road │ when I suddenly saw my friend.
- was walking conveys that an action that was ongoing – it wasn’t finished; in English grammar that is called the past progressive / continuous i.e. it was in progress.
[2] Little Red Riding
Hood used to visit her grandmother.
- 'Used to' conveys something that a person did frequently – in English grammar we would say that it was habitual or frequentative i.e. it was done on a regular basis.
English can complicate
matters by using other verb forms that are also used as other tenses:
When I was a little boy, │I
[i] visited my grandparents every summer │ and in the mornings
we [ii] would walk in the forest.
[i] and [ii] have other
tense usages in English, but they can also be used, as they are used here, to
convey the same idea of actions that were habitually performed i.e. more than
once. English often combines these with expressions of time: I visited my
grandparents every summer; in the mornings we
would walk in the forest
[3] When I was a
little boy, │ I visited my grandparents …
When I was a little boy, …
When I lived in Paris …
- The expressions convey something that lasted over a period of time
[4] The Greeks attacked the
Trojans for ten years
- The suggestion here is that the Greeks kept on attacking the Trojans. The translation here could also be: The Greeks had been attacking the Trojans for ten years.
[5] Suddenly the brave
soldier ran towards the enemy’s battle-line.
Did he get there, or did a
Carthagininan archer put a stop to it? The basic English verb does not imply
that.
Suddenly the brave
soldier started running ….
- English needs some other form to convey the idea that the action started; in Latin grammar this is known as the inceptive use (from Latin: incipiō, incipere [3-iō]: begin)
Latin uses a single
verb form to convey all of the five concepts above: the imperfect
tense.
And here’s a stupid little
story to show them all:
The ‘imperfect’ Little Red
Riding Hood
When Little Red Riding
Hood lived in Fairytale Land, she used to visit her
grandmother who had a house in the forest. Little Red Riding
Hood would buy doughnuts for her grandmother and always bought them
from Starbucks. One day, when she was walking through the
forest, a big bad wolf kept staring at her. She was scared
of wolves, and so she started heading towards the police
station.
[1]
Little Red Riding Hood lived in
Fairytale Land.
Her grandmother had a
house in the forest.
She was scared
of wolves.
- These three suggest what was the general situation over a period of time
[2]
She used to visit her
grandmother.
She would buy doughnuts.
She always bought them.
- Habitual actions, actions that were done regularly or more than once
[3]
She was walking through
the forest.
- Process: this was an action that was ongoing with no suggestion that she ever got to grandmother’s house
[4]
A big bad wolf kept
staring at her.
- an action that continued for a period of time
[5]
She started heading towards
the police station
- Inceptive: it refers to the beginning of the action with no suggestion that she reached it
Now look at this one:
The ‘perfect’ Little Red
Riding Hood
One day Little Red Riding
Hood’s mother gave her a basket of doughnuts and told her
to go to her grandmother’s house. Little Red Riding Hood promised to
obey her mother. When Little Red Riding Hood entered the woods
a wolf came up to her. "Good day to you, Little Red
Riding Hood," the wolf said. "Thank you, wolf,"
she replied. Then the wolf ate her.
None of these would be
expressed by the imperfect in Latin because they all refer to one-off, single
actions in the past. Latin uses a different tense for these – the perfect tense
– which has not yet been discussed in the group. Once the
review posts are over, we’ll look at it in detail.
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