LESSON 20 VERBS WITH CONTRACTED VOWEL ENDINGS Note—Contractions take place only in the present and imperfect tenses. All other tenses, since they have no two vowels coming together, are formed regularly, taking, however, a long vowel in the last syllable but one (see below). When α, ε, ο precede a vowel, whether long or short, it is generally contracted into one syllable. This has been illustrated in nouns and adjectives with contracted vowels (see Lesson 7). There are three forms of verbs, those