Tense: tense
| Values: | Past | Pqp | 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 is often the moment of producing the sentence, but it can be also another event in the context.
In the corpus, tense can appear on verbs (VERB), the verbal auxiliaries (AUX), and, in phrasal verb particles, postpositions (ADP) and adverbs (ADV).
Pres: present
The present tense denotes actions that are in progress (or states that are valid) in a reference point. In Naga-Suansu, the marker le is used to mark actions and events that are valid at the current reference point, without any specification on their progression or conclusion. The marker le is not used for realized and complete events that belong to the past and states or events that have not happened or are projected to happen in the future.
Examples
- Miszu puidungre India nahn bathale “Many peoples live in India.”
Past: past
The past tense denotes actions that happened before a reference point. In Naga-Suansu, the past form is expressed via the morpheme -e or by the base form of the verb depending on the phonological properties of the verb stem.
Examples
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Bai ashu bai the thaie “She/he saw her/his mother yesterday.”
-
Bu re “They came.”
Pqp: pluperfect
The pluperfect denotes action that happened before another action in past (it is not used for temporal clauses denoting successive events). In Naga-Suansu, this tense is expressed via the marker -ha. This form can also be used to describe established and immutable properties grounded in reality.
Examples
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Khaliuh jaa kathie majaa rue bu di chokla ha matamda “The thieves cursed each other when they were arrested.”
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Hai khap gase di mari da sam ha “This hook is made of iron.”
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] [naq] [nmf] [pcm] [ps] [qpm] [ru] [sah] [say] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj] [xcl] [xmf]