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The preterite and the imperfect can be combined in the same sentence to express the occurrence of an event in one clause during an action or state expressed in another clause. For example: Ellos escuchaban la radio cuando oyeron un ruido afuera. (They were listening to the radio when they heard a noise outside.)
The preterite is used if this refers to a single action or event—that is, the person took a bath last night. Me bañé = "I took a bath" The imperfect is used if this refers to any sort of habitual action—that is, the person took a bath every morning. Optionally, solía bañarme can specifically express "I used to take baths".
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The preterite was a common Semitic form, well attested in the Akkadian language, where the preterite almost always referred to the past and was often interchangeable with the perfect. [11] In the course of time the preterite fell into disuse in all West Semitic languages , leaving traces such as the "imperfect with waw-consecutive " in Hebrew ...
Imperfect tense verbs represent a past process combined with so called imperfective aspect, that is, they often stand for an ongoing past action or state at a past point in time (see secondary present) or represent habitual actions (see Latin tenses with modality) (e.g. 'he was eating', 'he used to eat'). The perfect tense combines the meanings ...
Regarding tense agreement, if the main clause uses the imperfect, preterite, or past perfect indicative, either the imperfect or past perfect subjunctive is used. However, if the event of the subordinate clause is timelessly true, the present subjunctive is optional: " Dios decretó que las serpientes no tengan patas " ("God decreed that snakes ...
The verbs ser (to be) and ir (to go) both exhibit irregularities in the present, imperfect and preterite forms (note that these two verbs have the same preterite fui). Together with ver (to see) and prever (to foresee), they are the only four verbs with irregular imperfect indicative.
The imperfective aspect may be fused with the past tense, for a form traditionally called the imperfect. In some cases, such as Spanish and Portuguese, this is because the imperfective aspect occurs only in the past tense; others, such as Georgian and Bulgarian, have both general imperfectives and imperfects.