Tenses.
§ 173. The Tenses in Principal Sentences.—The general meaning of the Tenses has already been explained, § 57. It is most clearly seen in the leading Verbs of Principal sentences.
The tenses of the leading Verbs in Principal Sentences express time absolutely. The tenses of the Verbs in Dependent Sentences (§§ 224, 225), and of the Infinitive (§ 204), and the Participles (§ 364) generally express time dependent on that of their leading Verb.
§ 174. Tenses which refer to the present or future are called Primary Tenses; those which refer to the past are called Secondary or Historic Tenses.
Primary: Present, Perfect Proper, Future, Future-Perfect.
Secondary: Perfect Aorist, Imperfect, Pluperfect.
The Perfect, Pluperfect, and Future Perfect, are often called the Completed Tenses, because they necessarily denote an action already finished; as opposed to the Present, Imperfect, and Future, which are called Incomplete Tenses.
§ 175. The following table represents the correspondence of the Latin and English Tenses:—
Primary Tenses.
| Pres. | I write or am writing scrībō |
| Perf. | I have written or have been writing scrīpsī |
| Fut. | I shall writeor shall be writing scrībam |
| Fut. Perf. | I shall have written or shall have been writing scrīpserō |
Secondary Tenses.
| Perf. Aorist. | I wrote scrīpsī |
| Imperf. | I was writing scrībēbam |
| Pluperf. | I had written or had been writing scrīps{subst:ebreve}}ram |
§ 176. Special Uses of the Tenses.
Besides the general use of the tenses, as explained in § 57, they have the following special developments in Latin.
