Preterite


The preterite or preterit is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past. In general, it combines the perfective aspect with the past tense, and may thus also be termed the perfective past. In grammars of particular languages the preterite is sometimes called the past historic, or the aorist.
When the term "preterite" is used in relation to specific languages it may not correspond precisely to this definition. In English it can be used to refer to the simple past verb form, which sometimes expresses perfective aspect. The case of German is similar: the Präteritum is the simple past tense, which does not always imply perfective aspect, and is anyway often replaced by the Perfekt even in perfective past meanings.
Preterite may be denoted by the glossing abbreviation or. The word derives from the Latin praeteritum, meaning "passed by" or "past."

Romance languages

Latin

In Latin, the perfect tense most commonly functions as the preterite, and refers to an action completed in the past. If the past action was not completed, one would use the imperfect. The perfect in Latin also functions in other circumstances as a present perfect.
Typical conjugation:
dūcō, dūcere, dūxī, ductus
ego-ī
tū-istī
is, ea, id-it
nōs-imus
vōs-istis
eī, eae, ea-ērunt

Dūxī can be translated as "I led", "I did lead", or "I have led."
A pronoun subject is often omitted, and usually used for emphasis.

French

In French, the preterite is known as le passé simple. It is a past tense that indicates an action taken once in the past that was completed at some point in the past. This is as opposed to the imperfect, used in expressing repeated, continual, or habitual past actions. In the oral language, the compound tense known as le passé composé began to compete with it from the 12th century onwards, and has since replaced it almost entirely. French simple past is mostly used in a narrative way to tell stories and describe successive actions. Novelists use it very commonly; it brings more suspense, as the sentence can be short without any time reference needed. In the oral language, the simple past is rarely used except with story telling. Therefore, it would be atypical to hear it in a standard discussion.
Typical conjugations:
-er verbs -ir verbs -re verbs -oire verbs*
je-ai -is -is -us
tu-as -is -is -us
il/elle/on-a -it -it -ut
nous-âmes -îmes -îmes -ûmes
vous-âtes -îtes -îtes -ûtes
ils/elles-èrent -irent -irent -urent

In Romanian, the preterite is known as perfectul simplu. The preterite indicates a past accomplished action, however this tense is not frequent in the official language and not frequent in the standard speech. The general tendency is to use the compound past to express a past action that is perceived as completed at the moment of speaking. Simple past is still actively used in current speech in the southwestern part of Romania, especially in Oltenia, but also in Banat mostly in rural areas. Usage of the preterite is very frequent in written narrative discourse, the simple past of the speech verbs being generally after a dialogue line in narration:
When used in everyday speech in standard Romanian, the preterite indicates an action completed recently:
The second person is often used in questions about finishing an action in progress that is supposed to be over, giving the question a more informal tone:
The forms of the simple perfect are made of an unstressed stem of the infinitive, a stressed suffix that is different in each group of verbs, and the endings -i, -și, -∅, -răm, -răți, -ră, which are the same for all the verbs:
-a verbs -ea verbs -e verbs -e verbs -i verbs -î verbs
suffix asuffix usuffix usuffix sesuffix isuffix â/î
eu-ai -ui -ui -sei -ii -âi
tu-ași -uși -uși -seși -iși -âși
el/ea-ă -u -u -se -i -î coborî
noi-arăm -urăm -urăm -serăm -irăm -ârăm
voi-arăți -urăți -urăți -serăți -irăți -ârăți
ei/ele-ară -ură -ură -seră -iră -âră

Italian

In Italian, the preterite is called passato remoto. It is a past tense that indicates an action taken once and completed far in the past. This is opposed to the imperfetto tense, which refers to a repeated, continuous, or habitual past action and to the passato prossimo, which refers to an action completed recently.
In colloquial usage, the use of the passato remoto becomes more prevalent going from North to South of Italy. While Northern Italians and Sardinian use passato prossimo in any perfective situation, Southern Italians will use passato remoto even for recent events.
Typical conjugations:
-are verbs -ere verbs * -ere verbs *-ire verbs essere
io-ai -ei / -etti -i -ii fui
tu-asti -esti -esti -isti fosti
lui-ò -é / -ette -e -ì fu
noi-ammo -emmo -emmo -immo fummo
voi-aste -este -este -iste foste
loro-arono -erono / -ettero -ero -irono furono

*Many -ere verbs in Italian have stem alternations in the 1st person singular, 3rd person singular and 3rd person plural. Some verbs also have endings -etti, -ette, and -ettero.
In a few remarkable cases, all three options exist for a single verb, although usage of each of these forms may vary. For perdere for example, the first person singular can occur as persi, perdei or perdetti or perduto ).

Portuguese

In Portuguese, the preterite is the pretérito perfeito. The Portuguese preterite has the same form as the Spanish preterite, but the meaning is like the "composed past" of French and Italian in that, for example, corri means both "I ran" and "I have run." As in other Romance languages, it is opposed to the pretérito imperfeito. Note that there does exist a pretérito perfeito composto but its meaning is not that of a perfect; instead it shows an iterative aspect. For example, tenho corrido does not mean "I have run" but rather "I've been running."
Typical conjugations:
-ar verbs -er verbs -ir verbs most irregular verbsser/ir
eu-ei -i -i -e fui
tu-aste -este -iste -este foste
ele-ou -eu -iu -e foi
nós-ámos 1-emos -imos -emos fomos
vós-astes -estes -istes -estes fostes
eles-aram -eram -iram -eram foram

1 Without the acute accent in Brazilian Portuguese.

Spanish

In Spanish, the preterite 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. Usually, a definite start time or end time for the action is stated. This is opposed to the imperfect, which refers to any repeated, continuous, or habitual past action. Thus, "I ran five miles yesterday" would use the first-person preterite form of ran, corrí, whereas "I ran five miles every morning" would use the first-person imperfect form, corría. This distinction is actually one of perfective vs. imperfective aspect.
The special conjugations for the "yo" form of the preterite are listed below ; these are needed to keep their respective sounds.
When conjugating -er and -ir verbs, their endings are the same.
The "usted" and "ustedes" forms of all verbs ending in -uir and -oír, as well as some verbs ending in -aer, end in -yó and -yeron, respectively; these are needed to keep their respective sounds.
Examples of verbs that have anomalous stems in the preterite include most verbs ending in -ducir as well as most verbs that are irregular in the "yo" form of the present tense.
In most Iberian Mainland Spanish and, to a lesser extent, Mexican Spanish, there is still a strong distinction between the preterite and the present perfect. The preterite denotes an action that began and ended in the past, while the present perfect denotes an action that began in the past and is over; thus,
In most other variants of Spanish, such as in the Americas and in the Canary Islands, this distinction has tended to fade, with the preterite being used even for actions in the immediate pre-present with continuing relevance. Coincidentally, British Mainland English present perfect forms are occasionally replaced with simple pasts by Irish and North American English speakers where an adverb makes it redundant, a similar but not exactly parallel development.
Typical conjugations:
-ar verbs -er verbs -ir verbs most irregular verbsser/ir
yo-é -í -í -e fui
tú-aste -iste -iste -iste fuiste
él/la
usted		-ó -ió -ió -o fue
nosotros-amos -imos -imos -imos fuimos
vosotros-asteis -isteis -isteis -isteis fuisteis
ellos/as
ustedes		-aron -ieron -ieron -ieron fueron

Germanic languages

In Germanic languages, the term "preterite" is sometimes used for the past tense.

English

The majority of English's preterites are formed by adding -ed or -d to the verb's plain form, sometimes with spelling modifications. This is the result of the conjugation system of weak verbs, already in the majority in Old English, being raised to paradigmatic status and even taking over earlier conjugations of some old strong verbs. As a result, all newly introduced verbs have the weak conjugation. Examples:
A number of English verbs form their preterites by suppletion, a result of either ablaut, a regular set of sound changes in the conjugation of a strong verb, or because the verb conjugations are the remains of a more complex system of tenses in irregular verbs:
With the exception of "to be" and auxiliary and modal verbs, interrogative and negative clauses do not use their main verbs' preterites; if their declarative or positive counterpart does not use any auxiliary or modal verb, then the auxiliary verb did is inserted and the main verb appears in its plain form, as an infinitive:
For more details, see English verbs, Simple past, and Uses of English verb forms.

German

has a grammatical distinction between preterite and perfect. Originally the distinction was as in English: The Präteritum was the standard, most neutral form for past actions, and could also express an event in the remote past, contrasting with the Perfekt, which expressed an event that has consequences reaching into the present.
In modern German, however, these tenses no longer reflect any distinction in aspect, which parallels this lack of distinction in the present, which has no separate verb form for the present progressive. The Präteritum now has the meaning of a narrative tense, i.e. a tense used primarily for describing connected past actions, and is used most often in formal writing and in literature.
Typical conjugations with the word sein are:
Ind. PräsensInd. PräteritumKonj. PräsensKonj. Präteritum
ichbinwarseiwäre
dubistwarstseistwärest
er/sie/esistwarseiwäre
wirsindwarenseienwären
ihrseidwartseietwäret
siesindwarenseienwären

For example, in spoken Upper German, beyond the auxiliary verbs sein, werden, können, wollen, haben, the Präteritum is rarely used in the spoken language and informal writing, though the grammatical form is fundamental to producing the subjunctive and conditional forms, while compound verb conjugations are used instead. Yiddish has gone even further and has no preterite at all. Rather, there is only one past tense, which is formed using what was originally the perfect. The dialect of German spoken in North America known as Pennsylvania German has also undergone this change with the exception of the verb to be, which still retains a simple past.
The Alemannic German has also largely lost the präteritum/preterite form. The only exception were the speakers of the isolated Highest Alemannic Saleytitsch dialect which disappeared around 1963/64.
Conjugations with the word siin were:
Ind. PräsensInd. PräteritumKonj. PräsensKonj. Präteritum
ichbìnwasssiigìweijì
dubìschtwasschtsiigìschtweijìscht
är/schi/äsìschtwasssiigìweijì
wiersinwassùn/wansiigìweijì
iersiitwassùtsiigìtweijìt
schisìnwassùn/wansiigìweijì

Semitic languages

Semitic languages, including Hebrew and the Akkadian language, feature the preterite. It is used to describe past or present events, and contrasts with other, more temporally specific tenses.