Example of Imperfecto :
Yo estudiaba a las nueve de la mañana = I was studying at nine this morning S P Compliment
Estudiaba → Estudiar AR Verbs conjugated with a standard root found by
dropping the infinitive plus the appropriate endings + aba
Ella dormia
a la alcoba = She was sleeping at the bedroom S
P Compliment
Domia → Dormir IR Verbs conjugated with a standard root found by
dropping the infinitive plus the appropriate endings + ia
Sometimes the subject of the sentences didn’t have to be mentioned. There are some reasons why the writer interested to discuss about this topic.
First, I want to know about the structure of both languages. Secondly the writer wants to know the correspondences, partly correspondences and non
correspondences between English and Spanish. And thirdly, the writer wants to apply the knowledge that she got from the lecturers during the study at English
Department of Faculty of Letter University of Sumatra Utara.
1.2 Scope of Analysis
The writer has carried out a comparative analysis between English and Spanish Tenses. There are some tenses in English and Spanish however in this
case, the writer limited the study on the similarities and differences between the past tenses of the two languages, and the writer focus on Simple Past Tense and
Past Continuous Tense.
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The limitation is necessary, as I want to make an intensive study of the problems of Past Tense either in English or Spanish.
1.3 Problem of Analysis
Language has its own forms and systems. English and Spanish, for example, although both of the languages have a relationship, yet there are much
dissimilarity can be found in their grammar. Concerning with this case, I raised a problem to be analyzed:
1. How are the forms of Simple Past Tense and Past Continuous Tense both
in English and Spanish? 2.
Are there correspondences and non-correspondences in the types, forms and functions between English and Spanish past tenses, especially in
Simple Past Tense and Past Continuous Tense.
1.4 Objective of the Analysis
Concerning with the problem of the correspondences and the non- correspondences between English and Spanish Simple Past Tense and Past
Continuous Tense, and having been equipped by knowledge from English and Spanish grammar books, this analysis is intended to achieve some objectives:
1. To give a brief explanation of both English and Spanish tenses in the past
form, especially in Simple Past Tense and Past Continuous Tense. 2.
To give an account of correspondences and non-correspondences between English and Spanish past tense especially Simple Past Tense and Past
Continuous Tense, which including their types, forms, and function.
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1.5 Significance of Analysis
The writer expect the significance both theoretically and practically. Theoretically, this thesis will be able to give an understanding about both of
the languages, English and Spanish especially in the Past Form. Practically, this thesis is expected to be able to give something new to enrich the
comparative analysis study, and can be useful to the student that interested to comparative analysis study.
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CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
2.1 A Brief History of English and Spanish Language
English and Spanish are the two European languages which are most spoken today. These both languages are the members of the common ancestor,
Proto-Indo-European. English belongs to Germanic, branch of Indo-European while Spanish belongs to Romance group of Italic, branch of Proto-Indo-
European.
2.1.1 A Brief History of English
English was originated from the Old Saxon language, which brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of northwest Germanic. From the
beginning of the Christian era around A.D 400, the speakers what was to become English were scattered along the northern coast of Europe. They spoke a dialect of
Low German. More exactly they spoke several different dialects, since they were several different tribes. The name given to the tribes who got to England are
Angles, Saxons and Jutes. For convenience, we can refer to them all as Anglosaxon.
The history of English can be divided into three periods : a. Old English 500-1100
Old English is said technically to begin in 449 CE with the invasion of Kent by Hengest and Horsa, although we place its starts at 500 CE, since it must
have taken one or two generations- at least- for it to develop its distinctive
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character; we do not have the first manuscript attestations of English until about 700 CE. We know that the Anglo-Saxons spoke West Germanic, a sister dialect to
Old High German, Old Frisian, Old Low German, Low Saxon and Old Low Franconian. Several very important features characterize Old English:
1 Old English was synthetic, or fusional, rather than analytic or isolating.
2 The noun, verb, adjective, determiner and pronoun were highly inflected.
Consequently, word order was not as rigid as in Present-Day English. 3
There were weak and strong declensions of noun and adjectives. 4
There were also weak and strong conjugations of verbs. 5
The vocabulary of Old English was overwhelming Germanic in character approximately 85 per cent of the vocabulary used in Old English is no
longer in use in Modern English. 6
Word formation largely took the form of compounding, prefixing and suffixing; there was relatively little borrowing from other languages.
7 Gender was grammatical dependent on formal linguistics criteria, not
logical or natural contingent on sex. b. Middle English 1100-1500
During the Middle English period a number of very significant changes became more and more visible in the English language. The major changes from
Old to Middle English are the loss of inflections, and with it the development of more fixed word order. As the Old English period, language contact led to
borrowing, but its scale was far greater during this period than it had been before. There are some changes in the linguistics development, such as major changes in
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the sound system: the consonants, vowels, lengthening and shortening, diphthongs; major morphological changes: verb and word order.
c. Modern English Early Modern English 1500-1800 and Present day English 1800-present
By the Early Modern English period the structure of the standard language was very close to its structure in Present Day English. There were still some
significant changes to come, such as the Great Vowel Shift, but with regard to short vowels, consonants, morphology and syntax, changes were slight. What is
noticeable to a present-day reader of Early Modern English is its comparative variability. In the period from 1500-1700, there was considerable free variation of
forms in comparison with Present Day English. This is hardly surprising in a language that was only just beginning to be accepted as a legitimate medium of
communication in science, the arts and administration. By 1700, however, English had stabilized and texts written after that period are remarkably easy for modern
reader to comprehend. English language as we know it today was fairly well established by the
eighteenth century. Since that time, while some changes in the structure have indeed occurred, they are comparatively minor in nature. Unlike in the Early
Modern English period, there are few changes in phonology and even fewer in morphology and syntax, with major changes taking place as ever in the lexical
stock of English. The changes that have taken place in this last-named component are minor.
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2.1.2 A Brief History of Spanish
The Spanish language developed from vulgar Latin, with loan-words from Basque in the north and Arabic in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula see
Iberian Romance languages. Typical features of Spanish diachronic phonology include lenition Latin vita, Spanish vida; Latin lupus, Spanish lobo,
palatalization Latin annum, Spanish año and diphthongation of short EO from vulgar Latin Latin terra, Spanish tierra; Latin novus, Spanish nuevo; Latin
tempus, Spanish tiempo; Latin ferrum, Old Spanish fierro and modern hierro. Similar phenomena can be found in many other Romance languages as well,
especially after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD reduced cultural contact with the Roman Empire.
The standard Spanish language is also called Castilian. In its earliest documented form, and up through approximately the fifteenth century, the
language is customarily called Old Spanish. From approximately the sixteenth century on, it is called Modern Spanish. Spanish of the 16th and 17th centuries is
sometimes called classical Spanish, referring to the literary accomplishments of that period. Unlike English and French, it is not customary to speak of a middle
stage in the development of Spanish. Castilian Spanish originated, after the decline of the Roman Empire, as a continuation of spoken Latin in the Cordillera
Cantábrica, in northern Spain, in the 8th and 9th centuries AD, according to most authorities; but others claim it came from Franco-Navarrese and Gothic-Castilian
dialects in the 11th century AD. With the Reconquista, this northern dialect spread to the south, where it almost entirely replaced or absorbed the provincial dialects,
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at the same time as it borrowed massively from the vocabulary of Moorish Arabic and was influenced by Mozarabes the Romance speech of Christians living in
Moorish territory and medieval Judeo-Spanish Ladino. These languages all but
vanished in the Iberian peninsula by the late 16th century.
The language was brought to the Americas Latin America, especially Mexico, Central America and western South America, and to the Federated
States of Micronesia, Guam, Marianas, Palau and the Philippines, by the Spanish colonization which began in the 16th century. The Spanish failed to exercise land
claims over the Solomon Islands and Micronesia, where a map reader can find some geographic place names in Spanish, but no major Spanish cultural influence
is felt in distant, often isolated islands in the three centuries of Spanish administrative rule in these areas later acquired by the Germans and Americans by
1900.
In the 20th century, Spanish was introduced in Equatorial Guinea and Western Sahara after periods of Spanish colonial rule, and it is also studied and
spoken in former French and Portuguese colonies in Africa and Asia, but it is not the main languages of these areas. It is also spoken in parts of the United States
that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City, at first by immigrants from Puerto Rico, and later by other Latin
American immigrants who arrived there in the late 20th century.
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2.2 Related Study
