What is the meaning of the unfinished past tense in French?

The explanation upstairs is very detailed, and in a nutshell it is what has been done in the past, indicating a state or continuity.

In Chinese: When I entered the house, he was sleeping.

Here, I enter the house as a point action, using the compound past tense. When he is sleeping, he denotes a continuous action, and he uses the imperfect past tense.

First of all, both of these are indicative of what happened in the past.

For specific usage, Ma Xiaohong's textbooks or grammar books have written a lot, and it is estimated that they are incomprehensible, so this question will be raised.

Let me illustrate to you with our Chinese example, it may be more intuitive to compound the past tense and be more inclined to indicate the completion of an action.

Whereas, the incomplete past tense denotes the description of the state in the past.

When we express the present tense, we are actually in a state of action and state: he is eating.

Action: He eats.

That imperfect past tense and composite past tense are actually the correspondence of the two and present tenses, so if both things happened in the past, then it should be stated as such: 1He was eating at the time il mangeait

2.He has already eaten il a mangé

Example sentence 1, which indicates the description of the past state, is an action that was ongoing in the past, and example sentence 2 in the unperfect past tense indicates the completion of the past action, which is used in the compound past tense.

The imperfect past tense is an action that denotes a work in progress that has no clear boundaries in time.

Whereas, the composite past tense denotes an action that was completed at a certain moment in the recent or distant past.

For example: pleuvait quand nous sommes sortis du cinéma(The incomplete past tense creates a background, and la pluie is the environment for the action of sortir).

habitait à algérien quand il y a eu le tremblement de terre de 2003.(Description).

il a habité pendant plusieurs années à alger.(Limited continuation).

Very simple.

Similarities: Both denote the past.

Difference: Compound past tense, indicating that the action has been completed and done. Emphasis on the end.

The past tense is not completed, which means that the action is being done and is still ongoing. The emphasis is on the state.

The imperfect past tense is equivalent to the past present tense, a description of a recurring, repetitive past action whose action ends at the time of the speaker's speech. In the compound past tense, the action is often non-sustainable and ends briefly. Just think about the difference between what I was doing my homework and when I did.

The unperfect past tense denotes an action that has been going on for a period of time in the past or a habitual action, and the compound past tense denotes an action that has been done in the past.

The last word should be.

il habitait a alger pendant plusieurs annees.Right?

The compound past tense emphasizes the action.

The straightforward state is emphasized in the past tense of the unfinished past.