Excerpt from Report on the Terminology and Classifications of Grammar

In dealing with the verb we have introduced several innovations. In Vedic and Sanskrit we have substituted for the term Imperfect tense the term Past tense which corresponds more accurately to the meaning of the form in literature. Be it observed that the term 'past' does not exclude the idea of continuity or habit in past time; thus the English 'past tense' (e. G. 'wrote', 'loved is frequently used as a Past Imperfect. But the current term Imperfect', besides being defective, does exclude other past meanings, and is therefore unsuitable for a tense which, like the Greek Aorist Indicative, is commonly used as a tense of narration in past time.1 Instead of the term Aorist as applied by European grammarians of Hindostani, Bengali, and other modern Indian vernaculars to the forms which are derived from the old Present Indicative of Sanskrit, we have adopted the term 'present', which is often used in grammars written by Indian scholars, adding thereto the adjective old in order to distinguish it from Presents of modern formation. The Old Present survives in all the modern indo-aryan languages. But in most of them it has suffered changes of meaning, whereby the original meaning of the tense has in some vernaculars been thrown completely into the shade. Thus it has come about that the form is in its modern usage 'indefinite but indefinite in respect of mood as well as of tense. This Wide and varying range of usage of the Old Present is briefly indicated in our note on the meanings of this tense in §xxv of our report; but the full statement of its usage in the several vernaculars is left to be dealt with by writers of particular grammars.

An outline of the classification of Conditional Sentences, which is applicable to all the languages of our family, is given in XII (6) below.

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