can be confusing. The use of these terms here is based on the reconstructed meanings of the corresponding forms in PIE and the terms used broadly in linguistics to refer to aspects with these meanings. In traditional PIE terminology, the forms described here as stative, perfective and imperfective are known as the perfect, aorist and present systems: Stative = Perfect Perfective = Aorist Imperfective = Present The present/imperfective system in turn can be conjugated in two tenses, described here as present and past but traditionally known as present and imperfect. The traditional terms are based on the names of the corresponding forms in Ancient Greek (also applied to Sanskrit), and are still commonly encountered. Furthermore, there is a separate secondary-verb form commonly known as the "stative" and marked by a suffix *-eh₁-, which has no connection with the stative/perfect described here. The following table shows the two systems of terminology. In Proto-Indo-European, the aspects had no tense meaning, like they did in the later languages. In Ancient Greek, for example, the perfect carried the meaning of a state resulting from a past action, but the PIE stative referred to the state alone. Likewise, the aorist, though having a tense-like meaning in Ancient Greek, had none in PIE. Perfective and stative verbs were effectively tenseless, or indifferent to time. Eventive verbs The perfective ("aorist") and imperfective ("present") aspect classes are together known as eventive, or verbs that depict events, to distinguish them from stative (verbs that depict a state of being). Both shared the same conjugation, with some small differences. The main difference was that imperfective verbs allowed the use of special present-tense (primary) endings, while perfective verbs only allowed the default tenseless (secondary) endings. The present tense used the primary eventive endings, and was used specifically to refer to present events, although it could also refer to future events. The past tense referred to past events, and used the secondary eventive endings. Perfective verbs always used the secondary endings, but did not necessarily have a past-tense meaning. The secondary endings were, strictly speaking, tenseless, even in imperfective verbs. This meant that past endings could also be used with a present meaning, if it was obvious from context in some way. This use still occurred in Vedic Sanskrit, where in a sequence of verbs only the first might be marked for present tense (with primary endings), while the remainder was unmarked