Many of us who write and speak in English will likely be surprised when told that unlike the Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian among them), English doesn’t have a well-developed
past imperfect tense. Verbs in the Romance languages typically inflect for the past imperfect to describe continuous situations, incomplete, or coincident actions in the past, but English verbs don’t inflect at all for this tense in much the same way that it doesn’t for the future tense. Instead, what English does to evoke the past imperfect is to combine the past progressive form of the main verb with the past tense forms of the verb “be.”
To better understand how the imperfect tense works, let’s first formally distinguish between the “imperfect” and “perfect” in grammar. As we know, verbs typically inflect to indicate the time element and the so-called
aspect of the action, which indicates whether it’s continuous, complete or incomplete, in progress, or habitual. Verbs in the Romance languages inflect to denote most of these aspects, but English does for only two—
the perfect, for a past action that was completed or “perfected,” as in “He
cooperated with us,” and
the imperfect, for a past action that was still in progress or uncompleted, as in “He
was cooperating with us.”
The imperfect aspect of English verbs is grammatically formed in the same way as their
past progressive form, which combines the past tense of “be” with the main verb’s “-ing” or
present participle form, as in “was cooperating.” This basic form of the English imperfect, called
the continuous participle, works to describe an unfolding action or event that was in progress in the past. Then, to evoke
the past imperfect aspect, the sentence typically requires another past action or condition to provide a time frame for it.
To form the past imperfect, it must be made clear that the unfolding action or event was for some reason unfinished or interrupted, not “perfected,” as in these sentences: “The newly married couple
were honeymooning in Venice when they received bad news from home.” “His associate mismanaged their business
while he was negotiating deals in Shanghai.”
To better appreciate the need for the past imperfect, consider this statement: “We
were cooperating on a major ASEAN tourism project.” It would be meaningful only as an answer to a previously asked question like, say, “What
were you doing when the Corvid-19 pandemic broke out last week?” The following past imperfect sentence can then express the answer neatly: “We
were cooperating on a major ASEAN tourism project when the Corvid-19 pandemic broke out.”
The past progressive, thankfully, isn’t the only way English can evoke the past imperfect. To compensate for being unable to inflect verbs for the various shades of this aspect, English came up with three other ways of evoking continuous, incomplete, or coincident past actions, as follows:
“Used” + the verb’s infinitive form. This expresses repeated, regular, or habitual past actions or situations: “He
used to drive to Tagaytay at a moment’s fancy before Taal Volcano erupted last January.” “Images of Disneyland
used to obsess the girl in her teens.” “The Middle East oil producer
used to host lavish parties until the price of crude dropped below breakeven cost.”
“Would” + the verb’s basic form (the verb stem). “They
would party all night during school vacations.” “Every day the beleaguered candidate
would wait for a sign in the sky that her disqualification ordeal would soon be over.”
The verb’s simple past tense + an adverb of frequency. “They
were always at odds in their younger days.” “He often screamed every time his wife sang offkey.” “The father
rarely complained whenever his daughter made exorbitant purchases.”
This ends our discussion of the English past imperfect tense.
(Next week:
How English auxiliary verbs differ from linking verbs) March 26, 2020
This essay, 1,186th of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the March 19, 2020 print and Internet editions of The Manila Times
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How the English past imperfect tense works
