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Old November 17, 2014, 04:37 AM
Donquick Donquick is offline
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Tenses

Hi All,

I thought I pretty much had the subject of tenses under my belt having learned other languages before and having a reasonably good grasp of English grammer, but I can't get this one straight in my mind - so somebody please put me out of my misery

I use spanishdict.com as my main lookup source because it is so useful. There is a conjugation facility which shows all of the verb conjugations for any particular word in a chart which is v. cool.

I understand all of the tenses shown except one. This one is the Preterite perfect. I am used to the compound past tenses being 'have eaten', 'had eaten', 'would have eaten', and 'will have eaten' being present perfect, past perfect / pluperfect, conditional perfect and future perfect. But what is this extra one - preterite perfect. In spanish we are shown - He vivdo (pres. perfect), hube vivido (preterite perfect), habia vivido (past perfect), and then the conditional and future perfects. So (in English) what is the differenence between the three. I would say that the first one is 'I have lived' and the last one is 'I had lived', but what is the middle one with the preterite of 'had' followed by the participle in English.

Perhaps it is just conceptual and is also 'I have lived' but used when the preterite would be more suitable than the imperfect, but what would such a situation look like in English?

Thanks,
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  #2  
Old November 17, 2014, 09:15 AM
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Julvenzor Julvenzor is offline
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Hi Donquick,


He vivido is pretérito perfecto (we don't name it "presente perfecto" as we do in English)
Hube vivido is pretérito anterior (we don't name it "pasado perfecto" as we do in English)
Había vivido is pluscuamperfecto

Due to that in Spanish there are two simple past forms (preterite and imperfect), there are also two compund past forms. I'll will try to explain the uses and differences among them:

Preterite: Generally, a fact/an action happened once in the past and within a definite temporal scheme. In literature, this tense offers a "hard narration" (it involves quickness).
Imperfect: A reiterative fact/action in the past and without a definite temporal scheme. In literature, this tense offers a "soft narration" (it involves slowness, slow motion effect).

Pretérito anterior: It's, specially, a literary tense. One uses it when reffering to a punctual fact/action carried out before than another punctual fact/action in the past.

1. For example: Nada más hubieron aterrizado, explotó el avión.

Pluscuamperfect: It's a common and very useful tense. One uses it whenreffering to any fact/action carried out before than another fact/action in the past. It's, therefore, more imprecise than the "pretérito anterior".

Both compound past tenses are translated into English as "past perfect": to have + participle.

A pleasure.

Last edited by Julvenzor; November 17, 2014 at 09:18 AM.
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Old November 25, 2014, 04:30 AM
Donquick Donquick is offline
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Hi Julvenzor,

Thank you for the comprehensive answer. So I think you are saying that it is the same as the decision about using the preterite or the imperfect for the simple past. This sounds logical.

I guess that in the expressions with two parts it is typical for the pretérito anterior to be followed by a clause with the preterite (such as your example) and the pluscuamperfecto to be followed by a clause with the imperfect.

(pretend these are in Spanish because it will take me about an hour to work out the translations). The instant that the aeroplane had landed, it exploded = pretérito anterior + preterite.

After we had drunk all the wine, we danced = pluscuamperfecto + imperfect.

Is this always the case though? What about this: As soon as the whistle had blown, we used to line up outside the kitchen. pretérito anterior + imperfect or pretérito anterior + preterite.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Don
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Old November 25, 2014, 09:58 PM
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wrholt wrholt is offline
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If you re-read Julvenzor's answer to you, you'll see that he said that pretérito anterior is "specially literary".

According to Butt & Benjamin, pretérito anterior is uses only to indicate an event completed just before another past event, it's normally used only in literature and it is extremely rare in speech. B&B also states that is it used only after expressions that can be translated as "as soon as" to indicate a single completed event. If the completed event was repeated or habitual, one uses the ordinary pluperfect instead.

In other words, you'll see it occasionally while reading literary works, but it's all but obsolete in speech, as almost everyone uses the ordinary pluperfect instead.
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Old December 02, 2014, 11:17 AM
Donquick Donquick is offline
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Thanks for your answer - it is interesting to see the excerpt from your text book. This seems to confirm the original answer and reinforce the obsolescence of the anterior tense in verbal use.

Not sure why I need to re-read anything though. Are you suggesting that it being used only in literature means that I should feel disinclined to discuss the issue further for interest? I would have thought this forum would the the place to do it if anywhere.

Anyway, thanks again for your confirmation of the use of the tense. Good news really, one less thing to learn.
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Old December 02, 2014, 03:59 PM
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wrholt wrholt is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Donquick View Post
Thanks for your answer - it is interesting to see the excerpt from your text book. This seems to confirm the original answer and reinforce the obsolescence of the anterior tense in verbal use.
I'm glad it helped.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Donquick View Post
Not sure why I need to re-read anything though. Are you suggesting that it being used only in literature means that I should feel disinclined to discuss the issue further for interest? I would have thought this forum would the the place to do it if anywhere.
Actually, interest is a perfectly valid reason to continue to discuss pretérito anterior or any other feature of Spanish that has become obsolescent or obsolete. And this forum is certainly an appropriate place to do that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Donquick View Post
Anyway, thanks again for your confirmation of the use of the tense. Good news really, one less thing to learn.
And that's the key: knowing that a particular feature of a language is currently obsolescent or obsolete allows us to choose how much time we want to invest in learning about that feature, depending on what our goals are for investing the time in learning the language.
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