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Castilian Spanish Verbs:
Lesson 10: The preterite

The preterite is formed by adding the following endings to the root (without the stem vowel):

Person: 'I' 'you (singular)' 'He/she/it' 'We' 'You (plural)' 'They'
a-verbs: -é -aste -ó -amos -asteis -aron
e-verbs: -í -iste -ió -imos -isteis -ieron

This gives us the following forms:

Person a-verb:
cantar 'to sing'
root cant-		 e-verb:
beber 'to drink'
root beb-
1S 'I' canté 'I sang' bebí 'I drank'
2S 'you (singular)' cantaste 'you sang' bebiste 'you drank'
3S 'he/she/it' cantó 'he/she/it sang' bebió 'he/she/it drank'
1P 'we' cantamos 'we sang' bebimos 'we drank'
2P 'you (plural)' cantasteis 'you sang' bebisteis 'you drank'
3P 'they' cantaron 'they sang' bebieron 'they drank'

The meaning of the preterite is an event in the past.

I have said above that the endings of the preterite replace the stem vowel. But it is possible to analyse these endings as containing a stem vowel followed by another element, like the other parts of the verb. Like this, we would analyse the verb form as a root, a stem vowel and an ending (R-V-E):

Personal ending a-verb: cant-a-r e-verb: beb-e-r
1S -� cant- -� 'I sang' beb- -� 'I drank'
2S -ste cant-a-ste 'you sang' beb-i-ste 'you drank'
3S -� cant- -� 'he/she/it sang' beb-i-� 'he/she/it drank'
1P -mos cant-a-mos 'we sang' beb-i-mos 'we drank'
2P -steis cant-a-steis 'you sang' beb-i-steis 'you drank'
3P -ron cant-a-ron 'they sang' beb-ie-ron 'they drank'

To make this analysis work, we have to accept certain changes:

1. The stem vowel a disappears before endings -� and -�. This is similar to the loss of stem vowel a before the 1S present ending -o in canto.

2. The stem vowel e plus the 1 singular ending -� combine together to give -�.

3. The stem vowel e changes to ie in the 3 plural.

4. The stem vowel e changes to i in all persons except those mentions in 2 and 3 above.

There are so many changes to remember in this scheme that it might be simpler just to memories the complete groups (-�, -iste, -i�, etc.) without thinking of them as a stem vowel plus ending and then memorising the rules that let you convert from vowel + ending to complete group (eg. -e- + -� > -�).

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