Spanish: An Essential Grammar

-erand -irverbs whose stem ends in ñor lldrop the i from the regular ending: gruñir gruñendo grunt bullir bullendo seethe/boil I ...

Table 10.30Compound tenses Person Tense Hablar Beber Subir Singular 1 Perfect he hablado bebido subido Pluperfect había Future p ...

Subjunctive counterparts to the perfect and pluperfect tenses illustrated in Table 10.30 are formed using the present and imperf ...

Table 10.31Progressive tenses Person Tense Hablar Beber Subir Singular 1 Present estoy hablando bebiendo subiendo Imperfect esta ...

Leaving aside the subjunctive mood, which is considered in Chapter 12, the tenses in Spanish can be divided into three categorie ...

In state sentences The present tense describes a state or condition which exists at the present moment: Luis quiere a Andrea. Lu ...

The two basic uses of the preterite are illustrated in 11.1.2.1 and 11.1.2.2. Certain other uses are best explained by means of ...

To express actions in progress The imperfect tense is used to talk about events or actions that weretaking place at some time in ...

For intended or expected actions The imperfect is used to talk about actions or events that were intended or expected to take pl ...

With serand estar With serand estarthe preteriteis used to refer to states or conditions that have now ended, or to talk about d ...

Psychological verbs With psychological verbs the preterite indicates an act(such as recognition, learning, understanding) while ...

The conditional tense The conditional tense is used primarily in the main clause of a conditional sentence (see Chapter 13). For ...

(b) With one exception, no words may be inserted between haberand a past participle, e.g. Lo he dicho siempre‘I have always said ...

With unfinished periods of time The perfect tense is used for events that have occurred in a designated period of time that has ...

Para entonces habré By then I’ll have finished. terminado. ¿Lo habrá hecho Miguel? Could it be Miguel who did it? The conditiona ...

Progressive or continuous tenses Like their English counterparts the Spanish progressive tenses are used primarily with action v ...

The imperfect progressive This is used in similar ways to the present progressive, but with reference to past time: Cuando llegu ...

The future perfect progressive occurs primarily in conjectures: ¿Habrá estado intentando llamar? Do you think she’s been trying ...

In this usage Spanish has the presenttense where English has the perfect, and it has the imperfectwhere English has the pluperfe ...

Llevaralso commonly occurs with a gerund, but since this cannot be used negatively it is replaced by sin+ infinitive or one of t ...