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 some period of time not yet fully past: as, "I have seen him to-day; something must have detained him."

The Pluperfect tense is that which expresses what had taken place, at some past time mentioned: as, "I had seen him, when I met you."

The First-future tense is that which expresses what will take place hereafter: as, "I shall see him again, and I will inform him."

The Second-future tense is that which expresses what will have taken place, at some future time mentioned: as, "I shall have seen him by tomorrow noon."

OBSERVATIONS.

OBS. 1.--The terms here defined are the names usually given to those parts of the verb to which they are in this work applied; and though some of them are not so strictly appropriate as scientific names ought to be, it is thought inexpedient to change them. In many old grammars, and even in the early editions of Murray, the three past tenses are called the Preterimperfect, Preterperfect, and Preterpluperfect. From these names, the term Preter, (which is from the Latin preposition præter, meaning beside, beyond, or past,) has been well dropped for the sake of brevity.[233]

OBS. 2.--The distinctive epithet Imperfect, or Preterimperfect, appears to have been much less accurately employed by the explainers of our language, than it was by the Latin grammarians from whom it was borrowed. That tense which passes in our schools for the Imperfect, (as, I slept, did sleep, or was sleeping,) is in fact, so far as the indicative mood is concerned, more completely past, than that which we call the Perfect. Murray indeed has attempted to show that the name is right; and, for the sake of consistency, one could wish he had succeeded. But every scholar must observe, that the simple preterit, which is the first form of this tense, and is never found in any other, as often as the sentence is declarative, tells what happened within some period of time fully past, as last week, last year; whereas the perfect tense is used to express what has happened within some period of time not yet fully past, as this week, this year. As to the completeness of the action, there is no difference; for what has been done to-day, is as completely done, as what was achieved a year ago. Hence it is obvious that the term Imperfect has no other applicability to the English tense so called, than what it may have derived from the participle in ing, which we use in translating the Latin imperfect tense: as, ''Dormiebam, I was sleeping; Legebam, I was reading; Docebam, I was teaching''. And if for this reason the whole English tense, with all its variety of forms in the different moods, "may, with propriety, be denominated imperfect;" surely, the participle itself should be so denominated a fortiori: for it always conveys this same idea, of "action not finished," be the tense of its accompanying auxiliary what it may.

OBS. 3.--The tenses do not all express time with equal precision; nor can the whole number in any language supersede the necessity of adverbs of time, much less of dates, and of nouns that express periods of duration. The tenses of the indicative mood, are the most definite; and, for this reason, as well as for some others, the explanations of all these modifications of the verb, are made with particular reference to that mood. Some suppose the compound