What is the tense of the verb "emparejara" in this sentence?

[jimbojohn]

Hi dear enthusiasts,

This sentence seems to be in the past tense, but "emparejara" seems to be from future or I do not know what it is.

"Los uruguayos mantuvieron la ventaja durante la mayoria del partido, y una decision dudosa del arbitro permitio que Brasil emparejara las acciones."

Many thanks in advanced.

[wrholt]

"Emparejara" is the imperfect subjunctive (a past-tense form of the subjunctive mood) of the verb "emparejar" = "to match up".

The verb "permitir" requires using a subjunctive-mood verb in its dependent clause. Due to sequence-of-tenses rules between main clauses and dependent clauses, the fact that "permitió" is a preterit form restricts the choice of subjunctive-mood verb to one of the past tense forms. If the form of "permitir" were one of the non-past forms, then the choice of subjunctive-mood verb in the dependent clause would be restricted to non-past tense forms.

[jimbojohn]

Thank you wrholt . I certainly need to work a fair bit on my grammar as I had no clue about that.

[wrholt]

Originally Posted by jimbojohn

Thank you wrholt . I certainly need to work a fair bit on my grammar as I had no clue about that.

Ah; then you might also notice (again?) the importance of written accents, as the only indication of the difference in pronunciation between third-person singular future emparejará (last syllable has the tonic stress) and first/third-person -ra imperfect subjunctive emparejara (second-to-last syllable has the tonic stress) is the presence or absence of the written accent on the last syllable.

Incidentally, the imperfect subjunctive has 2 possible sets of endings, one with -ra- and one with -se-. For the most part they are interchangeable. Your original text could also have been written as follows with no change in meaning:

"Los uruguayos mantuvieron la ventaja durante la mayoria del partido, y una decision dudosa del arbitro permitio que Brasil emparejase las acciones."