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Summaries of the narratives (plots) of works of fiction are conventionally presented using the present tense, rather than the past tense. At any particular point of the story, as it unfolds, there is a now and so a past and a future, so whether some event mentioned in the story is past, present, or future, changes as the story progresses.
Verb tenses are inflectional forms which can be used to express that something occurs in the past, present, or future. [1] In English, the only tenses are past and non-past, though the term "future" is sometimes applied to periphrastic constructions involving modals such as will and go.
A tense for after tomorrow is thus called post-crastinal, and one for before yesterday is called pre-hesternal. [citation needed] Another tense found in some languages, including Luganda, is the persistive tense, used to indicate that a state or ongoing action is still the case (or, in the negative, is no longer the case). Luganda also has ...
In Spanish, the preterite (pretérito perfecto simple, or pretérito indefinido) is a verb tense that indicates that an action taken once in the past was completed at a specific point in time in the past. (Traditional Spanish terminology calls all past tenses pretéritos, irrespective of whether they express completed or incomplete actions or ...
The aorist tense (Greek ἀόριστος (aóristos) "unbounded" or "indefinite") describes a finished action in the past. κατέβην χθὲς εἰς Πειραιᾶ. [76] katébēn khthès eis Peiraiâ. I went down yesterday to Piraeus. Often in narrative it is found mixed with present and imperfect tenses: [77]
According to Pinkster, the historic present is the most frequent tense used in narrative in both prose and poetry. [22] In Caesar when a verb is placed initially in the sentence, as in the first example above (videt imminēre hostēs), it is very frequently in the present tense. [37]
The normal prose practice is to use either a past tense of dēbeō 'I have a duty to' or oportet 'it is proper' with the infinitive, or else a gerundive with a past tense of sum. The jussive pluperfect is also fairly uncommon. The following examples are from Cicero, again using the negative nē: [41] nē popōscissēs (Cicero) [42]
Aorist (/ ˈ eɪ ə r ɪ s t / AY-ər-ist; abbreviated AOR) verb forms usually express perfective aspect and refer to past events, similar to a preterite. Ancient Greek grammar had the aorist form, and the grammars of other Indo-European languages and languages influenced by the Indo-European grammatical tradition, such as Middle Persian, Sanskrit, Armenian, the South Slavic languages ...