grammar question

[Some Android]

I'm learning a second language (Spanish if you must know), and I just have some quick questions about verb tenses.

Present Indicative: Someone does, or Someone is. Basically saying a person does an action. I run. He eats She sings. They do the action in the present.

Gerund: Similar to Present Indicative but really stressing the now, and it's temporary - not an ongoing action. They are doing something. I am running. He is eating. She is singing. Basically the English equivalent of -ing.

Past Particle: Something happened. An action took place, and it was in the past. It is over. I ran. He ate. She sang. The English equivalent of -ed for a lot of verbs (ironically none of the verbs I used as examples).

Imperative: A command. You are telling someone to do something. Go do something. In English you can omit the subject when a sentence uses this verbs (because the subject is usually you, and it would be kind of redundant to include it (but not always)).

Present Subjunctive: Saying something could theoretically happen or that something might happen in the future. Expressing an idea that has not yet become real or is hypothetical. Basically saying if or could.

Future Indicative: Something will definitely happen in the future. An action that will come to pass but has not yet happened. I will run. He will eat. She will sing.

Imperfect Indicative: ??? No idea. I couldn't find any information on what this means.

Preterit Indicative: ??? Again no idea. I also couldn't find any information on this.

Could someone with more knowledge of grammar just go over these and tell me if I'm (mostly) right and what the last two are? Thanks

[Red Fel]

Imperfect Indicative: ??? No idea. I couldn't find any information on what this means.

Preterit Indicative: ??? Again no idea. I also couldn't find any information on this.

Could someone with more knowledge of grammar just go over these and tell me if I'm (mostly) right and what the last two are? Thanks

The Preterit and Imperfect both deal with actions in the past. But the Preterit deals with actions which took place at a specific time in the past, while the Imperfect tells us that an action generally took place in the past. Here are three illustrations:

Past: Abel walked. (Past action.)

Preterit: Baker walked until two o'clock. (Past action, definite finish.)

Imperfect: Carter used to walk. (Past action, no definite start or finish.)

One key indicator of the preterit is whether you have a timing phrase, such as "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away," or, "On that day, mankind received a grim reminder." By contrast, the imperfect is indicated by general timing phrases such as "Often," "Sometimes," or "Usually." Alternatively, there are certain actions that take a fixed period of time and have a definite beginning and ending, such as "Dalton and Ella got married," as the act of getting married has a beginning and an end.

[Aedilred]

I'm learning a second language (Spanish if you must know), and I just have some quick questions about verb tenses.

Present Indicative: Someone does, or Someone is. Basically saying a person does an action. I run. He eats She sings. They do the action in the present.

Gerund: Similar to Present Indicative but really stressing the now, and it's temporary - not an ongoing action. They are doing something. I am running. He is eating. She is singing. Basically the English equivalent of -ing.

Past Particle: Something happened. An action took place, and it was in the past. It is over. I ran. He ate. She sang. The English equivalent of -ed for a lot of verbs (ironically none of the verbs I used as examples).

Imperative: A command. You are telling someone to do something. Go do something. In English you can omit the subject when a sentence uses this verbs (because the subject is usually you, and it would be kind of redundant to include it (but not always)).

Present Subjunctive: Saying something could theoretically happen or that something might happen in the future. Expressing an idea that has not yet become real or is hypothetical. Basically saying if or could.

Future Indicative: Something will definitely happen in the future. An action that will come to pass but has not yet happened. I will run. He will eat. She will sing.

Imperfect Indicative: ??? No idea. I couldn't find any information on what this means.

Preterit Indicative: ??? Again no idea. I also couldn't find any information on this.

Could someone with more knowledge of grammar just go over these and tell me if I'm (mostly) right and what the last two are? Thanks

OK.

I don't know how helpful you'll find it but the first thing to do, to my mind, is to separate out tenses from other verb forms.

A tense tells you when a verb is taking place. Present, past, future, essentially, with some variation.
A voice tells you how positively the verb is taking place: whether the subject of the sentence is performing the verb, or whether it's being performed on or to them.
A mood tells you how forcefully the verb is being performed.

A participle is, essentially, an incomplete part of a larger verb form.
A gerund is a verb being used in such a way that it effectively becomes a noun.

In a heavily inflected language like, say, Latin, these have more significance, but it's still useful not to get them muddled up.

In this instance:

Tenses: Present, Imperfect, Preterit, Future
Moods: Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative
(Voices): Active, Passive

There's only one subjunctive in the above list and you seem to have a handle on what that means. Likewise your understanding of the imperative seems to be correct. Indicatives are in fact just what we think of as the standard verb form. Generally when you're taught a verb declension you're taught the indicative even if you're not told that's what it is.

Where you seem to have come unstuck is largely on past tenses, which isn't that surprising as they're usually the most complex of tense groups to handle. Essentially, there are different past tenses depending on how long ago, and how long for, a verb took place.

Imperfect: The verb took place over a period of time, and might even still be going on. There may be an implication that the action was interrupted.
Preterit: the verb occurred at some point in the past and is no longer ongoing.

Let's take as our example "to sing".

Present: I sing/I am singing.
Future: I will sing.
Imperfect: I was singing/used to sing.
Preterit: I sang.

Note the difference in sense between the imperfect and preterit uses.
I'm not sure if they're used in Spanish but there are a couple of other past tenses too.

Perfect: I have sung.
Pluperfect/Past Historic: I had sung.

There is also of course, the infinitive: "to sing".

Some of those verbs are compounds made up of more than one word. If you take the second part only, ignoring the prefix (e.g. "singing" for the imperfect or present, or "sung" for the perfect/pluperfect) that is a participle. Generally these participles are paired with another verb following its own declension in order to create the full compound, so they're often learned separately. In the above list for instance the perfect tense is formed by combining the participle of "sing" with the present tense of "to have". They can sometimes be deployed too in their "incomplete" form depending on context.

Of course that is English and not all languages separate the same tenses. In Latin, for instance, the imperfect is a single word (cantabam, for "I was singing"), as is the infinitive ("cantare") - (which is the origin of the controversial linguistic belief that one shouldn't split an infinitive in English.)

Gerunds are kind of tricky to get your head around, although their use is actually pretty simple. It's deploying a secondary or tertiary verb in a sentence in place of a noun, and so still treating it as a noun. Take the following sentence:

"I hope you don't mind my using your shower."

An alternative way of phrasing that would be

"I hope you don't mind my use of your shower."

The former flows better, but you have the problem that you're deploying a verb (a present participle) where you really should have a noun. So you just treat the verb as if it were a noun, and so it's still treated as belonging to the speaker - hence "my using" rather than "me using".


I hope that was at least a bit helpful!