Breakdown of Как только новые студенты увидели экзамен, они испугались.
они
they
студент
student (m)
новый
new
экзамен
exam
Questions & Answers about Как только новые студенты увидели экзамен, они испугались.
Why are both verbs (увидели and испугались) in the perfective aspect here?
The phrase как только (as soon as) highlights that one action finishes and immediately triggers the next. In past-tense sentences like this, we almost always use perfective verbs in both parts of the sentence to show a fast sequence of completed, one-time events.
Can как только be used to talk about the future?
Yes! If you wanted to say 'As soon as they see the exam, they will get scared,' you would still use perfective verbs, but in the future tense: Как только они увидят экзамен, они испугаются. Notice that Russian uses the future tense in both clauses, unlike English which uses the present tense for the first part.
Why does испугались have the -сь ending?
The verb испугаться is reflexive, which is indicated by the -ся or -сь suffix. If you just used испугали without the reflexive ending, it would mean the students scared someone else. The reflexive ending shows that the action happened to the subject: they got scared themselves.
Since экзамен is the direct object being seen, shouldn't its ending change?
It is actually in the accusative case here! However, экзамен is a masculine inanimate noun (a non-living thing). For masculine inanimate nouns, the accusative case is completely identical to the nominative (dictionary) form, so the spelling does not change.