Past tenses in a story

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

Past tenses in a story: how they share the work

You have now built the four past tenses one at a time: the perfect in the lesson “The perfect (perfekat)”, and the aorist, the imperfect and the pluperfect in the last three lessons. Each makes sense on its own. What is less clear is why a language needs four, when a Serb tells you about yesterday with the perfect alone. The answer is that in a story they do not compete; they share the work. Today a story, spoken or written, rests on the perfect, and aspect decides what is an event and what is background. The other tenses are switches used for effect: the aorist for a sudden turn, the imperfect for an old-style background, the pluperfect for what had happened earlier, the present to pull the story close to the listener.

This lesson adds no new forms. Its aim is practical: to tell your own stories in the perfect with the right aspects, to slip in the present tense and a short aorist set phrase where they fit, and, in a book, a folk tale or a newspaper headline, to see why the writer changed tense.

The map: who does what in a story

First, all five forms together: the second column is the form’s job in a story, the third its tone and where it lives. Notice that the perfect is the only one whose job reads “everything”.

Two things are plain from the table. First, the aorist and the imperfect complement each other rather than duplicate: one can only push the plot, the other can only hold the background. That is why in a bookish text they often come as a pair. Second, the perfect is universal, and that is why it has nearly driven the others out of living speech: one form can do everything, provided the aspect is chosen well (the lesson “Aspect in the past”).

The conversational key: perfect plus aspect

Almost every story you will hear and tell is in this key, spoken or written: a message, a letter, the news, most modern prose. The form is always the same, the perfect, and the roles are divided by aspect, as the lesson “Aspect in the past” showed: the imperfective sets the scene, the perfective drives the chain of events. The usual order is two or three background verbs first, then a run of event verbs.

The third line hides a rule you will not find in any table of forms. The chain of three events stands on one sam: it is said with the first participle and understood after that. Person and number are already known, so Serbian does not repeat the clitic (a short word that cannot open a sentence, the lesson “The second-place rule”), just as English says “I went in, called the lift and pressed the button” with a single “I”. But a link that begins with pa, onda or zatim (“and then”, “then”, “after that”) is a new clause, and the clitic usually comes back straight after that word: Ušao sam u zgradu, pa sam pozvao lift. I went into the building and then called the lift.

With negation it is the other way round. Nisam is not a clitic but a stressed word (the lesson “The perfect (perfekat)”), so when every link is negated, it stands in every link and is never “understood”: Nisam ga video, nisam ga čuo i nisam ga tražio. I didn’t see him, didn’t hear him and didn’t look for him.

The conversational story has a second tool: the jump into the present tense at the climax (the lesson “Narrating past events”). It sits comfortably with the perfect inside one story and does not change the tone: it simply moves the camera in. It has its own section below.

Cheat sheet

The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.

Past tenses in a story

A story rests on the perfect; the other tenses are switches for effect. Two axes: the layer (chain, background, backstory) and the key, the tone (everyday, bookish).

One incident, three ways. The first two in English: “I was coming home around midnight. It was raining. I went into the building, called the lift, pressed the button, and then the power went out.”

• conv.: Vraćao sam se kući oko ponoći. Padala je kiša. Ušao sam u zgradu, pozvao lift i pritisnuo dugme — i tada je nestalo struje.
• book.: Vraćah se kući oko ponoći. Padaše kiša. Uđoh u zgradu, pozvah lift i pritisnuh dugme — i tada nestade struje.
• present: Vraćam se kući oko ponoći. Pada kiša. Ulazim u zgradu, pozovem lift, pritisnem dugme — i odjednom nestane struje.

Conversational: imperfective = background, perfective = chain; sam once per chain, back after pa, onda (pa sam pozvao lift); nisam in every link. Aorist only in set phrases: Ode voz! Stigosmo! Zaboravih! Odoh ja. Šta reče?

Bookish (folk tales, old prose): aorist = chain, imperfect = background; no auxiliaries, no gender. Modern prose: mostly the perfect. Truncated perfect (krnji perfekat), third person only: headlines (Nestao dečak iz Novog Sada. Umro poznati glumac “Famous actor dies”), folk songs, quick retellings (Došao, video, otišao.). Normally Došao je; Živeo! is a wish.

Pluperfect steps back: Kad smo stigli, voz je već bio otišao. Bookish: Bejaše došao rano i čekaše u hodniku. False turn: Bio sam krenuo za njim, ali sam se predomislio. “I had started after him, but I changed my mind.” If the order is clear, speech uses the perfect with već.

Narrative present: before the climax, perfect again for the ending; jokes all in the present (Dođe čovek kod lekara i kaže…). Signs: a free perfective present (sednem “I sit down”), past time markers (juče), the pronoun after the verb (ulazim ja). Habit: Svako veče dođe, sedne i počne da priča. “He would come, sit down and start talking.”

Effects: background + event = surprise (Sedeli smo i pričali, kad je neko zalupao na vrata); aorists in a row = speed (Skoči, zgrabi torbu i istrča na ulicu); background mid-chain = freeze-frame; the present = close-up. One or two switches per story.