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One feature of Catalan is the periphrastic preterite tense for referring to the remote past, which is constructed with characteristic present-tense forms of the verb anar (to go) and the infinitive of a verb (vaig parlar, vas/vares parlar, va parlar, vam/vàrem parlar, vau/vàreu parlar, van/varen parlar).
The past, also called preterite, is rarely used in the spoken and written language and the same applies for the past anterior in both indicative and subjunctive moods (because it has the past form of haver in the composite form). In the modern language, the periphrastic past and the periphrastic past anterior replace the past and the past anterior.
The Catalan verbal system is basically common to all Western Romance, except that most dialects replace the analytic perfect indicative with a periphrastic tense composed of vaig, vas (vares), va, vam (vàrem), vau (vàreu), van (varen) and the infinitive.
Non-finite Form Infinitive: sentir: Gerund: sentint: Past participle: sentit (sentit, sentida, sentits, sentides) : Indicative jo tu ell / ella (vostè)nosaltres vosaltres (vós)ells / elles
On another page, while Occitan uses exclusively the simple past tense, Catalan (most dialects) and Aragonese (Eastern dialects) use another past tense called the periphrastic past. This tense is made of the sum of the conjugation of the verb to go plus the verb performing the action in infinitive form:
There is a periphrastic past perfect as in modern Catalan: él/ell ba cantá/cantar (he sang). Conservation of the adverbial pronoun i (< IBI). Compared to the other dialects, more cases of evolution of the Latin endings -TY, -CE, -CI, -DE to -u, as in Catalan: peu (foot).
In general, however, Catalan is an SVO language. Sentences can be simple or compound, depending on whether they contain just one verb or more than one. In the sentences with more than one verb, they can be on an equal footing (juxtaposition or coordination), or there may be one main verb and other subordinate ones.
Future tense/time in French is often constructed with an inflected form, whereas English typically employs a periphrastic form, e.g. Where French expresses future tense/time using the single (inflected) verb catena sera, English employs a periphrastic two-word catena, or perhaps a periphrastic four-word catena, to express the same basic meaning ...