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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.
Central Catalan has abandoned almost completely unstressed possessives (mon, etc.) in favour of constructions of article + stressed forms (el meu, etc.), a feature shared with Italian [2] and Portuguese. Unstressed forms are rarely used in the spoken language, and are only retained for family relatives and set phrases. [19] Ton pare. Son avi ...
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:
The distinction between inflected and periphrastic forms is usually illustrated across distinct languages. However, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives (and adverbs) in English provide a straightforward illustration of the phenomenon. [7] For many speakers, both the simple and periphrastic forms in the following table are possible:
New forms also developed, such as the conditional, which in most Romance languages started out as a periphrasis, but later became a simple tense. In Romanian, the conditional is still periphrastic: aș fi, ai fi, ar fi, am fi, ați fi, ar fi.
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.