Breakdown of Não acreditei que ele nunca tivesse assassinado ninguém.
não
not / no
ele
he
ter
to have
ninguém
nobody / anybody
nunca
never
que
that (conjunction)
acreditar
to believe
assassinar
to assassinate
Questions & Answers about Não acreditei que ele nunca tivesse assassinado ninguém.
Why do we use tivesse assassinado here instead of the indicative tinha assassinado?
The main clause verb Não acreditei expresses doubt or disbelief, which requires the subjunctive mood in the following que clause. Because the suspected assassination would have happened before the moment of not believing, we use the Pluperfect Subjunctive (Pretérito Mais-Que-Perfeito do Conjuntivo). It is formed using the Imperfect Subjunctive of the auxiliary verb ter (tivesse) plus the past participle of the main verb (assassinado).
The English translation says anyone, so why does the Portuguese use ninguém (nobody)?
Portuguese requires negative agreement, often called double negatives. Because the negative adverb nunca appears before the verb, any indefinite pronouns that follow the verb must also be in their negative form. Therefore, you must use ninguém instead of alguém (someone or anyone). Literally, it is structured as 'never had assassinated nobody'.
If the main verb was in the Imperfect tense (Não acreditava), would the second verb still be tivesse assassinado?
Yes! Whether you use the Pretérito Perfeito (Não acreditei for a single moment of disbelief) or the Imperfect (Não acreditava for an ongoing state of disbelief in the past), both are past tense triggers for doubt. The action in the subordinate clause still happened before that past doubt, so the Pluperfect Subjunctive (tivesse assassinado) remains the correct tense to use.
Could I use the verb matar (to kill) here instead, and if so, how would the sentence change?
Yes, you could use matar, but the meaning becomes slightly broader (killed instead of murdered or assassinated). The grammatical structure stays exactly the same, but remember that matar is a verb with two past participles. While it uses the irregular short form (morto) for adjectives and the passive voice, it uses the regular long form (matado) with the auxiliary verb ter. So the phrase would be tivesse matado ninguém.
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