Although the so-called second preterite, or modal perfect is presently giving way to the first preterite in journalistic and scientific Komi, it has not totally disappeared from the modern Komi language. Its three major meanings, manifested in spoken language, dialects, folklore and fiction are: (1) evidential, (2) perfective, and (3) evidential-perfective. Those semantic groups impart essential information either on events not personally witnessed by the speaker or on the results of an action that has taken place before the moment of speaking. The conditions of using the forms of those two preterites are analysed.