ABSTRACT
Past tenses express states, actions or events related to the past. In Italian there are four main indicative past tenses: the perfect, the imperfect, the pluperfect and the simple past. The past participles of verbs taking essere change to agree with the subject. The verb avere itself takes the auxiliary avere and has a regular past participle: ho avuto, etc. In the passato prossimo, regular reflexive verbs all take the auxiliary essere preceded by the reflexive pronouns. The participles are regularly formed with -ato, -uto and -ito endings and agree with the subject. Irregularities in the passato prossimo concern the form of the past participle. Only a few -are and -ire verbs are irregular. When reporting what has been said in a past tense narrative, the change in perspective involves not only tenses but also other elements such as the person of the verb, personal and object pronouns, possessives, demonstratives and adverbs of time and place.
