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The simple preterite indicative, descending from the Latin perfect indicative, is primarily used in contemporary written Catalan. Although it has been largely replaced by the periphrastic preterite in the spoken language, the simple preterite indicative is still used in dialects such as central Valencian and the Catalan spoken on Ibiza .
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:
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:
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.
In Valencian the simple past tense (e.g. cantà 'he sang') is more frequently used in speech than in Central Catalan, where the periphrastic past (e.g. va cantar 'he sang') is prevailing and the simple past mostly appears in written language. The same, however, may be said of the Balearic dialects.