Page 20 - verbo italiano

10 / Webster’s New World 575+ Italian Verbs

COMPOUND TENSES

In English, the compound tenses are also called perfect tenses. Compound tenses
are composed of two words. The first word is the auxiliary (or “helping”) verb, and
it expresses mainly grammatical information such as person, tense, and mood. The
other word, the past participle, expresses principally the meaning of the verb:
ho cantato = ho (auxiliary verb, io/“I” form, present tense) + cantato (past
participle of cantare, “to sing”) = I have sung

In English, to form the compound tenses the auxiliary verb “have” is used with
the past participle—for example, “she has read the book,” “they had gone to the
movie.” In Italian, the auxiliary (or “helping”) verbs are essere (“to be”) and avere
(“to have”).
The perfect tenses are based on simple tenses, and they require the use of a help-
ing verb in a simple tense plus the past participle. Therefore, to form the Italian
compound tense you should know:
• How to form the past participle
• Avere and essere in their simple tenses
• Whether to use essere or avere as an auxiliary verb

How to form the past participle and whether to use essere or avere as auxiliary verb
are discussed in the next two sections.
Table 4 shows the compound tenses and the English equivalents of two Italian
verbs: parlare (“to talk”), which uses avere as an auxiliary verb to form compound
tenses, and andare (“to go”), which uses essere as an auxiliary verb.