Perfect Active
Table of contents
Perfect Tense - Overview
The perfect tense is one of three different past tenses (along with the imperfect and pluperfect) used in Latin. In its usage in the indicative mood, the perfect refers to a singular action that has been completed in the past. For example:
- The boy jumped.
If you picture the action described in this sentence, the sense that we get is that the boy performed the action of jumping in the past, and it was a one-and-done, instantaneous event (i.e., he didn’t keep on jumping; he just jumped once).
Another way to phrase the perfect tense is with the use of the helping verb “did [verb]”, especially in questions:
- The boy did jump.
- Did the boy jump?
The perfect tense can also describe an action that happened in the past but has lasting effects into the present. Such an interpretation of the perfect tense uses the helping verb “has/have [verb]ed”. Note the following example:
- He has died.
His death occurred in the past, but the effects of his dying are still felt in the present time (since he’s still dead).
Below are some other English examples (with Latin translations of the verbs) where we would use the perfect tense:
- She has done (fēcit) her homework.
- They gave (dedērunt) the football players free pizza on Friday.
- The students did write (scrīpsērunt) their exams.
- Katie has been asked (petīta est) to play Beyonce.
Perfect Active
We’ll begin our consideration of how to create and translate conjugated verbs with verbs in the perfect tense and active voice, which means that the subject of the verb performed the action of the verb. We’ll stick with just the perfect active until the second part of the semester because the first part of the semester focuses on nouns, adjectives, and pronouns. We do, however, need conjugated verbs to form comprehensible sentences in Latin, so we’ll use the perfect active as our main tense-voice combination for our first few weeks.
To form the perfect active of any given verb, we need to find the perfect active stem. To do this, we simply take the 3rd principal part of the verb’s dictionary entry and take away the final -ī.
For instance in the verb videō, the third principal part is vīdī and, thus, our perfect active stem is vīd-.
Once we have the perfect active stem, we need to add the personal endings for the perfect active to that stem. Focus here on the 3rd person endings in particular, as we’ll be using those endings the most this semester:
| Person | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | -ī | -īmus |
| 2nd | -istī | -istis |
| 3rd | -it | -ērunt/-ēre |
NB: There are two endings that can be used for the 3rd personal plural of the perfect active indicative: -ērunt or -ēre. Be careful about the second ending in particular, as you can confuse it with the ending of the 2nd principal part of 2nd conjugation verbs (e.g., videō, vidēre).
So if we wanted to form the 3rd person singular perfect active indicative of videō:
vīdī -> vīd- (perfect active stem) -> (add personal ending) vīdit
Then, if we wanted to translate vīdit, we have a few items to piece together. First, the fact that the verb is in the 3rd person singular means that the subject can be any 3rd person singular entity, whether that entity is named (using a nominative case noun, pronoun, or adjective – more on this later) or we need to supply that entity (e.g., “he”, “she”, “it”, “they (singular)”). So, here are some examples of the various ways in which we can translate vīdit:
- He saw.
- She has seen.
- It did see.
- They (singular) saw.
Note that the fact of the verb being in the 3rd person singular is enough for us to supply words like “he”, “she”, “it”, or “they (singular)” as the subject of the verb. This is a matter of personal interpretation and context, but the important point is that you do not need an explicit word in Latin to render subject pronouns like “he”, “she”, “it”, or “they” in English; you can supply it in English based on the Latin verb’s person and number.
You should also be able to go in the opposite direction, from a conjugated verb form to its dictionary entry. If you see a verb form that ends in -it or -ērunt / -ēre, you can detach that ending to get the verb’s stem and, thus, determine which verb’s dictionary entry it comes from. Take a look at the following example:
- mīsērunt
The -ērunt ending indicates that we’re dealing with a perfect active verb, one in the 3rd person plural. To figure out what the verb form means and how we can translate it accurately, we need to detach the -ērunt ending and identify the verb’s perfect stem as mīs-. When we peruse our Week 2 Vocabulary, in particular the verbs that begin with “m”, we see that mīsī is the 3rd principal part of mittō (“to send”). Thus, we can translate mīsērunt accurately after we have collated the information that we’ve gathered from its form and dictionary entry:
- mīsērunt
- Person and number: 3rd plural (“they”)
- Tense: perfect (happened in the past)
- Voice: active (subject performed action)
- Definition: “to send”
- Sample translations: “They sent”, “They have sent”, “They did send”