ABSTRACT
Verb conjugation in Catalan is complex for speakers of English. There are many tenses, a lot of endings, and then a lot of irregulars too. Perfect tenses are formed by conjugating the auxiliary verb haver (to have) in the appropriate tense, and then adding the past participle of the main verb. The imperfect subjunctive, also called the past subjunctive (since technically it can be used 'perfectively',), uses the same stem as the simple preterite indicative. When a quantified noun is modified by an adjective or an adjectival phrase and the adjective remains in the phrase after the omission of the noun (replaced by en), then the preposition de is compulsory. A certain reluctance experienced in Catalan against overusing possessives favours this construction with datives, normally translatable into English by means of possessives. With certain verbs the use of the dative pronoun is redundant, especially with verbs of (dis)like or interest, occurence, and also in possessive dative constructions.
