Tense: tense
| Values: | Fut | Imp | Past | Pres |
Tense is a feature that specifies the time when the action took / takes / will take place, in relation to the current moment or to another action in the utterance.
Past: past tense
The past tense denotes actions that happened before the current moment. Past tense in Czech consists of the past participle (also called active participle or l-participle), which is accompanied by a present auxiliary verb in the first and second persons, and stands alone in the third person.
The auxiliary (if any) is in its present form, so it will have Tense=Pres.
The participle has Tense=Past, even though it can also be used to form present conditional.
In Old Czech, Tense=Past is also used with VerbForm=Fin (finite verb) and denotes the
aorist (simple past tense, used typically but not exclusively with perfective verbs). This
form vanished from the language during the 15th century.
Examples
- Šel jsem domů. “I have gone home.”
- Šel jsi domů. “You have gone home.”
- Šel domů. “He has gone home.”
- An vstav i jide do svého domu. “And he arose, and went to his house.” (Old Czech aorist)
- Tehdy ona jidesta po něm. “Then they followed him.” (lit. “Then they went after him.” Old Czech aorist, dual number)
Imp: imperfect tense
Another simple past tense form that was used in Old Czech and disappeared during the 15th century. Used typically, but not exclusively, with imperfective verbs.
Examples
- A vstav Ježíš, jdieše po něm i jeho mlazší. “And Jesus arose, and his disciples followed him.” (lit. “went after him”)
- A když odtud jdieše Ježíš, jdiešta po něm dva slepcě. “And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed him.” (lit. “And when Jesus went from here, two blind men went after him.”; dual number)
Pres: present tense
The present tense denotes actions that are happening right now or that usually happen.
Note that morphologically present forms of perfective verbs have actually a future meaning
but they will still be marked Tense=Pres.
Examples
- Přicházím domů. “I come / am coming home.” (Přicházet is an imperfective verb.)
- Přijdu domů. “I will come home.” (Přijít is a perfective verb.)
- Jdu domů. “I go / am going home.” (Jít is an imperfective verb.)
Fut: future tense
The future tense denotes actions that will happen after the current moment. Future tense in Czech is formed in one of three ways, depending of the verb:
- Present forms of perfective verbs have future meaning. These forms are tagged
Tense=Pres, notTense=Fut(see above). - The verb být “to be” has a set of distinct future forms. They combine a future stem bud with present suffixes.
A small set of verbs (mostly motion verbs) have also future forms. These are formed as the present form (present stem and suffix)
with the prefix po-.
Although these forms are morphologically very close to the present forms, they are tagged
Tense=Futbecause the same lemma has also present forms and the feature must distinguish the two. - The remaining imperfective verbs have periphrastic future forms, consiting of the future form of the auxiliary být,
and the infinitive of the content verb. Only the auxiliary will have
Tense=Fut, while there will be no tense information at the infinitive.
Examples
- Půjdu domů. “I will go home.” (Jít is an imperfective verb, phonological rule transformed the prefix po- to pů-.)
- Budu přicházet domů. “I will be coming home.” (Přicházet is an imperfective verb and it forms future periphrastically.)
Tense in other languages: [ab] [abq] [aqz] [arr] [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [el] [en] [es] [fi] [fr] [ga] [gn] [gub] [ha] [hu] [hy] [it] [jaa] [ka] [ky] [pcm] [ps] [qpm] [ru] [sah] [say] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj] [xcl]