Tense: tense
The Tense feature applies to verbs (VERB and AUX), specifying the time when the action took / takes place, in relation to the current moment or to another action in the utterance.
Note that we are defining features that apply to a single word. If a tense is constructed periphrastically (two or more words, e.g. present tense auxiliary verb + supine of the main verb) and none of the participating words are specific to this tense, then the features will not directly reveal the tense. For instance, [sv] Jag hade varit där “I had been there” is past perfect (pluperfect) tense, formed periphrastically by the simple past tense of the auxiliary att ha “to have” and the supine form of the main verb att vara “to be”. The auxiliary will be tagged VerbForm=Fin|Mood=Ind|Tense=Past and the participle will have VerbForm=Sup|Tense=Past; neither of the two will have Tense=Pqp, which is only used in languages where this tense can be directly represented morphologically on the verb.
Pres: present tense
The present tense denotes actions that are happening right now or that usually happen.
Examples
- [sv] hon säger saker “she says things”
- [sv] det blir svårare “it becomes more difficult”
Past: preterite
The past tense denotes actions that happened before the current moment. It can also be used in secondary clauses to express a wish or something that is not reality.
Examples
- [sv] innan stadskulturen började “before urban culture began”
- [sv] han önskar att han var i Spanien “he wishes that he was in Spain”
Tense in other languages: [abq] [aqz] [arr] [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [el] [en] [es] [fi] [fr] [ga] [gn] [gub] [hu] [hy] [it] [jaa] [ka] [ky] [pcm] [qpm] [ru] [sah] [say] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj]