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This page pertains to UD version 2.

Tense: tense

Values: Imp Past Pres

Tense is a feature that specifies the time when the action took / takes / will take place, in relation to a reference point. The reference point is often the moment of producing the sentence, but it can also be another event in the context.

Western Armenian has a complex tense/aspect/mood system.

Note that we are defining features that apply to a single word. If a tense is constructed periphrastically (two words, e.g. auxiliary verb indicative + participle of the main verb), and none of the participating words are specific to this tense, then the features will probably not directly reveal the tense.

In Western Armenian, actions that happen before and after a past or present event are constructed by combining the auxiliary եմ/em “be” with perfect, resultative, and future participles.

In periphrastic future constructions, future reference is encoded by the aspectual auxiliary պիտի/piti, which has prospective aspect (Aspect=Prosp). The main verb is in the subjunctive mood and is annotated with Tense=Pres or Tense=Imp, depending on its morphological form (e.g. պիտի գայ/piti gay “he/she will come” or պիտի գար/piti gar “he/she would come”).

Note that Western Armenian also has an elaborate system of parallel tense-aspect-mood forms, traditionally called “secondary compound tenses”, formed periphrastically with finite forms of the auxiliary ըլլամ/ëllam and the resultative and future participles of the main verb. In these constructions, the auxiliary is annotated with Tense=Pres or Tense=Imp, while the participle carries the relevant aspectual feature, such as Aspect=Perf or Aspect=Prosp.

Past: past tense / aorist

The past tense denotes actions that happened before a reference point. The reference point is the moment of producing the sentence and the (completed) past event happened before the speaker speaks about it. In Armenian, this is the aorist.

Examples

Imp: imperfect

Imperfect is a special case of the past tense. It denotes actions that are happening during some past moment. These actions might continue after the moment of speaking, but also might not, i.e. the evidence is not in the form itself, but it is in the context.

Note that a limited set of verbs (գիտեմ/gitem, ունիմ/ownim, կրնամ/krnam) form imperfect and present morphologically with unmarked vs. marked stems (traditionally called “Defective Verbs with Secondary Expanded Stems”). The difference between them is related also to Mood and Aspect rather than Tense. The verbs with unmarked (“non-expanded”) stems will have Tense=Imp and Tense=Pres in indicative mood.

Examples

Pres: present tense

The present tense denotes actions that are in progress (or states that are valid) at a reference point; it may also describe events that usually happen. In the prototypical case, the reference point is the moment of producing the sentence.

Present-tense forms in the subjunctive mood may have future reference. They are nevertheless annotated with Tense=Pres, rather than Tense=Fut, in accordance with their morphological form.

Examples

Tense in other languages: [ab] [abq] [aqz] [arr] [axm] [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [el] [en] [es] [fi] [fr] [ga] [gn] [gub] [ha] [hu] [hy] [hyw] [it] [jaa] [ka] [ky] [naq] [nmf] [oge] [pal] [pcm] [ps] [qpm] [ru] [ruc] [sah] [say] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj] [xcl] [xmf]