Imperfect Tense

Table of contents

1. Imperfect Tense - Overview
2. Conjugating in the Imperfect
   1. Stem Vowel Changes
   2. Imperfect Tense Marker
   3. Personal Endings
      1. Active Personal Endings (Present System Tenses)
      2. Passive Personal Endings (Present System Tenses)
   4. Conjugation Examples - Dictionary Entry to Form
   5. Conjugation Examples - Form to Parsing and Translation
   6. Imperfect of esse
3. Imperfect Tense in Context

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Imperfect Tense - Overview

This unit introduces a new tense: the imperfect. The name is composed of a negation im- prefixed on “perfect”, which derives from the Latin verb perficere, “to finish.” Thus, the imperfect tense indicates a verbal action that is not finished; put differently, the action of an imperfect verb is incomplete or in progress. Like the perfect tense, the imperfect tense indicates an action that occurred in the past, but the major difference is that the imperfect indicates an action that is in progress and takes place over a period of time, versus the perfect which indicates an action that is completed and happened in an instant. Note the following comparisons:

• The boy said hello. (perfect tense, instantaneous action in the past)
• The teacher was saying those words. (imperfect tense, an action in the past that takes place over a period of time)
• The bull has been led by the farmer. (perfect tense, completed action)
• The bull was being led by the farmer. (imperfect tense, in progress action)

Thus, in English, we form the imperfect tense using helping verbs and specific participial forms of the main verb to indicate its pastness and its incomplete nature:

• (active voice) was/were [verb]ing
• (passive voice) was/were being [verb]ed

“was/were” puts the verb’s action in the past, while the “-ing” form of the verb in the imperfect active indicates its progressive (in progress)/incomplete nature. The addition of “being” to the imperfect passive makes the action progressive, and it is the only way to differentiate between the imperfect passive and the perfect passive:

• The tree was seen. (perfect passive, instantaneous action)
• The tree was being seen. (imperfect passive, in progress action)

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Conjugating in the Imperfect

For the imperfect tense in both the active and passive voices, we will use the second principal part of the verb. Compare this against the perfect tense, which uses the 3rd principal part for the active voice and the 4th principal part for the passive voice. The use of the 3rd and 4th principal parts to conjugate groups together the “perfect system tenses” (perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect), while the use of the 2nd and/or 1st principal parts to conjugate groups together the “present system tenses” (present, future, and imperfect).

The second principal part is the present active infinitive, or the “to” form of the verb (e.g., “to love”, “to see”). As explained in the last module, the second principal part also helps us determine what conjugation the verb belongs to: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3rd -iō, or 4th. While this distinction did not make a difference for conjugating the perfect tense, we must know a verb’s conjugation in order to conjugate in the imperfect tense. This is because the verb’s conjugation may dictate certain vowel changes in the verb’s stem.

The imperfect conjugates like the perfect active, in that you combine a stem with an ending to create a one-word verb form, but there are some steps in between that must be completed as well:

1. Get the verb stem by removing the -re from the end of the 2nd principal part.
2. If the verb belongs to the 3rd -iō or 4th conjugation, change the vowel left at the end of the stem (see below).
3. Add the syllable -bā- to the stem (a tense marker for the imperfect tense).
4. Add the appropriate personal ending for the person, number, and voice of the verb that you want.

Steps 2 through 4 are explained below:

Stem Vowel Changes

If your verb belongs to the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd conjugation, once you have removed the -re from the 2nd principal part, you are done with steps 1 and 2. (Technically, 3rd conjugation stems lengthen the final -e- to -ē-, but that long mark is negligible).

However, if your verb belongs to the 3rd -iō or 4th conjugation, you must change the vowel left at the end of the stem for phonetic reasons:

• 3rd -iō conjugation stems change the final -e- to -iē-.
• 4th conjugation stems change the final -ī- to -iē- as well.

Imperfect Tense Marker

The syllable -bā- appears in all imperfect indicative verb forms. While some grammars and textbooks consider this syllable part of the endings that characterize the imperfect tense, it is better to see it as separate because the personal endings that we are about to discuss are used in all the present system tenses (meaning the tenses that use the 1st and 2nd principal parts to conjugate, namely the present, future, and imperfect).

Personal Endings

The personal endings reflect the different person and number combinations that exist for a conjugated verb (e.g., 3rd person singular or 3rd person plural). While we had a set of personal endings for the perfect active, that set of endings (including -it for 3rd singular and -ērunt/-ēre for 3rd plural) is limited to the perfect active. The present system tenses (present, future, and imperfect), on the other hand, share a common set of personal endings, one for active voice and one for passive voice. Focus on the 3rd singular and 3rd plural endings in both voices, as we’ll be using them the most.

Active Personal Endings (Present System Tenses)

One helpful mnemonic to remember these endings is MOST MUST ISN’T (M/O, S, T, MUS, TIS, NT).

Passive Personal Endings (Present System Tenses)

Conjugation Examples - Dictionary Entry to Form

So, with all of these elements in place, let’s consider the following examples of conjugating in the imperfect tense.

For a 1st conjugation verb like amō, amāre, when we follow each of the steps above, we come up with the following constituent elements of the verb:

1. verb stem: amā- (amāre minus -re)
2. n/a
3. verb stem + imperfect tense marker: amābā-
4. verb stem + imperfect tense marker + (for example) 3rd person singular active ending: amābat

In terms of translation, the combination of verb aspects in the parse of amābat (3rd singular imperfect active indicative) means that a 3rd person singular subject performed the action of loving over a period of time in the past; for example, “he was loving” or “she was loving”.

For a 3rd -iō verb like capio, capere, however, we need to take step 2 (the vowel change) into account:

1. verb stem: cape- (capere minus -re)
2. verb stem with vowel change: capiē- (-e- becomes -iē-)
3. verb stem with vowel change + imperfect tense marker: capiēbā-
4. verb stem with vowel change + imperfect tense marker + (for example) 3rd person plural passive ending: capiēbantur

If capiēbantur is 3rd person plural imperfect passive indicative, then a sample translation can be “they were being taken”.

Here are two example paradigms of verbs conjugated fully in the imperfect active and passive, a 2nd conjugation verb (habeō, habēre -> stem = habē-) and a 4th conjugation verb (audiō, audīre -> stem with vowel change = audiē-), to illustrate respectively a verb with and a verb without step 2 (the stem vowel change) in the conjugation process.

Conjugation Examples - Form to Parsing and Translation

We must also be able to work in the opposite direction, i.e., taking a conjugated verb form and being able to parse and translate it. In order to do so, it is helpful to break the verb form down into the parts that make it up and determine the verb’s person, number, tense, voice, and mood from those components. For example:

• vidēbant

In this verb form, when we identify its constituent elements, it becomes relatively straightforward to identify its person, number, tense, voice, and mood. For example, the personal ending -nt is used to attribute a 3rd person plural subject to active verbs. The -bā- syllable that precedes it characterizes the imperfect tense verbs in the indicative mood, and the vidē- stem tells us that the verb comes from videō, vidēre, “to see.” Thus, “they were seeing”.

• capiēbātur

This verb form is composed of similar components: a stem in capiē- leads to a definition of “to take, seize”, and the -bā- syllable tells us that we’re in the imperfect indicative. The personal ending -tur fills out the remaining aspects (3rd singular passive), for a translation like “he was being taken”.

Imperfect of esse

The verb sum, esse, fuī, futūrus - to be is irregular in the present system tenses (present, future, and imperfect). You learned about its conjugation in the present tense when forming the perfect passive. Its imperfect tense, while slightly more regular, nevertheless is built on a stem that cannot be intuited from the 2nd principal part and does not exhibit the characteristic -bā- tense marker.

Thus:

• puer sapiens erat. “The boy was wise.”
• puellae fortēs erant. “The girls were brave.”

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Imperfect Tense in Context

We can swap the imperfect tense into any of the sentence structures that we’ve been working with in the perfect tense, including linking sentences, as above; passive constructions with ablatives of agent; active verbs of motion with expression of space; etc. Note, for example, these example sentences:

• equus ad puerōs currēbat.
  • The horse was running toward the boys.
• fīlius ob cībum laetus faciēbātur.
  • The son was becoming happy because of the food.
• puellae prīmam hōram sub arbōre sedēbant.
  • The girls were sitting under the tree for the first hour.
• pater et mater dōna fīliīs dābant.
  • The father and mother were giving gifts to their sons/daughters.

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