The Filipino completed aspect, also called perfective, presents an event as a bounded whole: the speaker looks at it as complete rather than from inside its unfolding. It often describes past events, but it is not a past tense. Context and time expressions locate the event; the verb form supplies its aspect and voice.
There is no single completed-aspect ending. The surface form depends on the verb's lexical family: -um- remains in bumili, initial m- changes to n- in nagluto, and patient-voice -in appears internally in binasa while the citation-form suffix disappears. Learn an attested family, not “root + past marker.”
Common completed forms
| Root and citation form | Completed form | Voice and surface pattern | Typical frame |
|---|---|---|---|
| bili → bumili | bumili | actor voice; -um- retained | bumili ang/si actor ng item |
| luto → magluto | nagluto | actor voice; mag- → nag- | nagluto ang/si actor ng food |
| basa → basahin | binasa | patient voice; internal -in-, final -in absent | binasa ng/ni actor ang text |
| punta → puntahan | pinuntahan | locative/directional voice; internal -in- | pinuntahan ng/ni actor ang place/person |
| bigay → ibigay | ibinigay | benefactive/instrumental (i-) voice selecting the conveyed item; internal -in- | ibinigay ng/ni giver ang item sa recipient |
| basa → mabasa | nabasa | stative/ability family; ma- → na- | meaning and participants depend on the lexical construction |
The table summarizes recurring morphology, not a machine for inventing verbs. Bumili and magbili, for example, belong to different lexical families and ordinarily mean “buy” and “sell.” One English word or one visible affix cannot predict the whole construction.
Bumili si Celso ng pandesal bago nagsara ang panaderya.
Celso bought bread rolls before the bakery closed. (neutral)
Ibinigay ni Hana kay Ruben ang ekstrang susi bago siya umalis.
Hana gave Ruben the spare key before she left. (neutral)
In the first sentence, actor-voice bumili selects si Celso as pivot. In the second, ibinigay selects ang ekstrang susi, the conveyed item, while the giver takes ni and the recipient takes kay. Both verbs are completed, but their voices and valency differ.
Completed does not simply mean past
A completed form can correspond to English simple past, present perfect, or past perfect. The particle na often adds “already” or signals that the completed event is relevant at the current reference point.
Ipinadala na namin ang mga dokumento, kaya hintayin na lang natin ang tugon.
We have already sent the documents, so let's just wait for the reply. (neutral)
Here ipinadala is completed and the separate particle na presents the sending as already achieved. English chooses a present perfect because the result matters now; Filipino does not need a separate present-perfect conjugation.
Completed aspect can also occur inside a future frame when one event will be complete relative to another:
Pagdating ninyo bukas, nakauwi na kami mula sa probinsiya.
By the time you arrive tomorrow, we will already have returned from the province. (neutral)
Bukas makes the reference point future. Nakauwi na presents the returning as complete by that point. Calling nakauwi “past tense” would fail to explain this sentence.
Hold aspect steady while voice changes
The root luto can describe one completed cooking event through different voice constructions.
Nagluto si Dina ng lugaw para sa kapitbahay niyang may sakit.
Dina cooked porridge for her sick neighbor. (actor voice; neutral)
Niluto ni Dina ang lugaw para sa kapitbahay niyang may sakit.
Dina cooked the porridge for her sick neighbor. (patient voice; neutral)
Both verbs are completed. Nagluto makes Dina the pivot and leaves the food as ng lugaw. Niluto makes the selected food ang lugaw the pivot and marks Dina with ni. The aspect did not change; the alignment did.
This is the distinguishing insight of Filipino verb study: luto is a family of constructions, and the citation form magluto reveals only one row of that family. The broader aspect-and-voice paradigm shows why a form must be identified on both coordinates.
Questions, negatives, and discourse context
Questions keep completed morphology when they ask whether a bounded event occurred.
Nakuha mo ba ang gamot para kay Lola? — Oo, nakuha ko na kaninang tanghali.
Did you get Grandmother's medicine? — Yes, I got it around noon. (neutral conversation)
The first nakuha asks about completion. The reply repeats the completed form and adds na. Short pronoun mo precedes ba in the ordinary enclitic cluster.
Negation normally places hindi before the completed predicate when the claim being denied is that the event occurred as a whole.
Hindi pinirmahan ng direktor ang kasunduan dahil may kulang na pahina.
The director did not sign the agreement because a page was missing. (formal-neutral)
The patient-voice frame remains intact: ng direktor is the actor and ang kasunduan the pivot. Negation does not license switching those markers.
— Natapos mo ba ang ulat kagabi? — Hindi; inayos ko lang ang mga talahanayan.
— Did you finish the report last night? — No; I only fixed the tables. (neutral conversation)
The reply does not use a negative completed form for “finish”; it denies the question with hindi and then supplies a different completed event, inayos. Aspect belongs to the event actually asserted.
Boundedness comes from the construction
Completed aspect does not promise that an action can never happen again. Tumawag siya presents one call as complete; the same person may call later. A naturally ongoing activity can likewise be bounded by duration or context.
Nagtrabaho si Joel sa klinika nang apat na taon bago lumipat sa Davao.
Joel worked at the clinic for four years before moving to Davao. (neutral)
The work lasted four years, but the speaker packages that interval as complete. The phrase nang apat na taon is an adverbial duration; it uses nang, not marker ng.
Common Mistakes
1. Adding an English tense ending
❌ Naglutoed si Pia ng meryenda para sa mga bata.
Incorrect — nagluto already carries Filipino aspect and does not take English -ed.
✅ Nagluto si Pia ng meryenda para sa mga bata.
Pia prepared a snack for the children. (neutral)
2. Using incompleted aspect for one finished event
❌ Naghahanda si Omar ng presentasyon kagabi.
Wrong for the intended meaning ‘Omar prepared the presentation last night’; this says he was preparing it or did so habitually.
✅ Naghanda si Omar ng presentasyon kagabi.
Omar prepared a presentation last night. (neutral completed event)
The first sentence becomes correct if another event interrupts the preparation. The correction changes the event view, not simply the date.
3. Mixing patient voice with an actor-pivot marker
❌ Binuksan si Marta ang bintana dahil mainit.
Incorrect — patient-voice binuksan requires Marta as a ni-marked actor.
✅ Binuksan ni Marta ang bintana dahil mainit.
Marta opened the window because it was hot. (neutral)
4. Guessing the affix from the English gloss
❌ Nagkain ang mga manlalaro pagkatapos ng ensayo.
Incorrect for ordinary actor-voice ‘ate’ — the established family is kumain.
✅ Kumain ang mga manlalaro pagkatapos ng ensayo.
The players ate after practice. (neutral)
Key Takeaways
- Completed aspect presents an event as bounded and complete; it is not identical to English past tense.
- Surface formation depends on the voice family: bumili, nagluto, binasa, pinuntahan, ibinigay.
- Voice remains active inside the aspect choice, so verb morphology and participant markers must agree.
- Na can add “already” or current relevance, but it does not create completed aspect by itself.
- Learn a root as an attested family with aspect forms, marker frames, valency, and lexical restrictions.
Related Topics
- Introduction to Verb AspectA1 — How Filipino verb forms present an event as completed, ongoing or habitual, contemplated, or just completed.
- Verb Paradigms as Aspect-and-Voice FamiliesA2 — Read Filipino verb paradigms as intersecting choices of event aspect and participant voice rather than as English tense conjugations.
- Incompleted AspectA2 — Use incompleted or imperfective verb forms for events viewed as unfolding, repeated, or habitual across past and present contexts.
- Recent-Perfective FormsA2 — Express events completed moments ago with recent-perfective ka- forms and genitive-form actors, often reinforced by lang or lamang.
- Completed versus Incompleted AspectB1 — Choose completed aspect for events viewed as bounded wholes and incompleted aspect for unfolding, recurring, or internally viewed events.
- Treating Aspect as English TenseB1 — Stop mapping Filipino completed, incompleted, and contemplated forms directly onto English past, present, and future tense.