Introduction

In comparison with English, German appears at first sight to have a very simple tense-aspect system, certainly if we restrict the terms tense and aspect to grammatical categories of the languages, whether expressed by synthetic or periphrastic means. German has two simple forms, the Present (as in ich liebe ‘I love’) and a simple past form, which I will henceforth, following German usage, call the Präteritum (as in ich liebte ‘I loved’). In addition, there is a compound past form, as in ich habe geliebt ‘I have loved’, which I will henceforth, following German usage, refer to as the Perfekt. Other periphrastic forms include the Pluperfect (as in ich hatte geliebt ‘I had loved’), the Future (as in ich werde lieben ‘I shall love’) and the Future Perfect (in German conventionally called the Futur II, as in ich werde geliebt haben ‘I will have loved’), although, as in many other languages, the question arises whether the Future and Future Perfect are more properly to be classified as tenses or moods. Some varieties of German also have Double Perfect and Double Pluperfect periphrastic forms, as in ich habe geliebt gehabt and ich hatte geliebt gehabt; English has no corresponding forms. The focus of interest in this article will be the distinction between the Perfekt and the Prateritum, the two major verb forms used with past time reference.

In some varieties of German, the system is even simpler, through loss of the Präteritum, leaving the Perfekt as the only form with past time reference as part of its basic meaning.