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72-477: With an estimated 7,800 native speakers (in the year 2000), Apma is the most widely spoken of Pentecost's native languages, and the fifth largest vernacular in Vanuatu as a whole. In recent times Apma has spread at the expense of other indigenous languages such as Sowa and Ske . Apma is increasingly mixed with words and expressions from Bislama , Vanuatu's national language. Like Pentecost's other languages, Apma

144-404: A Celtic language , has past, present and future tenses (see Irish conjugation ). The past contrasts perfective and imperfective aspect, and some verbs retain such a contrast in the present. Classical Irish had a three-way aspectual contrast of simple–perfective–imperfective in the past and present tenses. Modern Scottish Gaelic on the other hand only has past, non-past and 'indefinite', and, in

216-412: A hesternal tense , a past tense referring specifically to yesterday (although this name is also sometimes used to mean pre-hodiernal). A tense for after tomorrow is thus called post-crastinal, and one for before yesterday is called pre-hesternal. Another tense found in some languages, including Luganda , is the persistive tense, used to indicate that a state or ongoing action is still the case (or, in

288-556: A perfect aspect , denoting a state following a prior event. Some of the traditional "tenses" express time reference together with aspectual information. In Latin and French , for example, the imperfect denotes past time in combination with imperfective aspect, while other verb forms (the Latin perfect, and the French passé composé or passé simple ) are used for past time reference with perfective aspect. The category of mood

360-528: A consonant (most commonly r ) has historically been lost. Vowels can occur alone or in various combinations. A few words (e.g. miu "wild cane") contain a distinctive rounded high-front vowel, generally written as iu although perceived by speakers simply as a variant of u . Stress is normally on the penultimate syllable of a word. However, syllables that end with a consonant or a long vowel take stress in precedence to other syllables. Basic word order in Apma

432-399: A few local people whose fathers or mothers were Sowa speakers still remember parts of the language, although none speak it fluently. A couple, including Isaiah Tabi Vahka of Waterfall Village and Adam Bulesisbwat of Lesuubelakan, compiled short written notes on Sowa in an attempt to ensure that the language was not lost. The only linguist to have studied Sowa while the language was still alive

504-432: A fully authentic restoration of the language. Given the close relationship between Sowa and Ske language (the two are reckoned by locals to have been mutually intelligible), a case could be made for classifying the two as dialects rather than as separate languages. In his 1976 survey of New Hebrides Languages , Darrell Tryon classified Sowa as a separate language, calculating its cognacy with Ske at 77% (with 80% being

576-534: A greater variety of tenses, see the section on possible tenses , above. Fuller information on tense formation and usage in particular languages can be found in the articles on those languages and their grammars. Rapa is the French Polynesian language of the island of Rapa Iti . Verbs in the indigenous Old Rapa occur with a marker known as TAM which stands for tense, aspect, or mood which can be followed by directional particles or deictic particles. Of

648-553: A large number of stative verbs that describe an item. For example, there is a verb "to be red" ( meme ) and a verb "to be good" ( gabis ). Apma uses stative verbs in many of the situations where adjectives would be used in English. Unlike neighbouring Raga language , Apma has a copular verb , (v)i or bi . The phrase tei… meaning "it was…" ( tevi… in Suru Kavian) is commonly used to focus attention on something or to set

720-444: A lesser extent Suru Rabwanga, vowels have been lost from a number of verb roots, producing 'bound verbs' which begin with a pair of consonants (such as -mni and -slo above). Since clusters of consonants within a syllable are prohibited in Apma, speakers usually cite these verbs with a prefix such as mwa- attached ( mwamni , mwaslo ), and do not identify them as words when unprefixed. In addition to verbs denoting actions, Apma has

792-535: A long vowel. Clusters of consonants within syllables were not permitted. Unlike in neighbouring Ske , there was no prenasalization of consonants in Sowa. In addition to the five standard vowels ( a , e , i , o and u ), Sowa appears to have had mid-high vowels é (intermediate between e and i ) and ó (intermediate between o and u ), like in Ske and Sa languages. Long vowels ( aa , ee , etc.) occurred as

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864-481: A noun by the addition of a nominalising suffix -an : Modifiers generally came after a noun: Verbs were preceded by markers providing information on the subject and the tense , aspect and mood of an action. Some of these are difficult to reconstruct, due to inconsistencies within and between sources, but a plausible set is: Dual (two-person) forms incorporating a particle ra also existed, as in Ske , but are not well remembered. Negative phrases began with

936-592: A result of the dropping of r at the ends of words, and are shown to have been distinct from short vowels by minimal pairs such as me "to be red" and mee (< mer ) "to be black". Because no linguist ever worked directly with a native Sowa speaker, the language's grammar is poorly known. However, some of the basics can be deduced from the phrases that are remembered. Personal pronouns were distinguished by person and number . They were not distinguished by gender . The basic pronouns in Sowa were: Nouns in Sowa were generally not preceded by articles . Plurality

1008-461: A result of un-phonetic spelling and interference from other languages. By comparison with related languages such as Apma and Raga , there appear to have been relatively few restrictions on the distribution of consonants. However, it appears that consonants occurring at the end of an utterance were modified according to Apma-like rules, with b , v and possibly w converted to p , d devoiced to t , g devoiced to k , and r dropped to produce

1080-487: A syllable. Unlike in closely related Raga language , word roots in Apma can end with a consonant. In archaic and northern varieties of Apma, prenasalization of consonants occurs in some environments, so that b becomes mb , d becomes nd , and g becomes ngg . This feature has been lost in modern Suru Mwerani dialect. Apma's five vowels come in short forms ( a , e , i , o and u ) and long forms ( aa , ee , ii , oo and uu ). Long vowels typically occur where

1152-420: A tense-marked verb (V) and its direct object (O); in other words, they permit [Verb- Adverb -Object] ordering. In contrast, other languages (such as English) do not allow the adverb to intervene between the verb and its direct object, and require [Adverb- Verb -Object] ordering. Tense in syntax is represented by the category label T, which is the head of a TP (tense phrase). In linguistics, a tenseless language

1224-568: A tenseless language, say, to express explicitly in the target language all of the information conveyed by the tenses in the source. A few languages have been shown to mark tense information (as well as aspect and mood) on nouns . This may be called nominal tense , or more broadly nominal TAM which includes nominal marking of aspect and mood as well. The syntactic properties of tense have figured prominently in formal analyses of how tense-marking interacts with word order. Some languages (such as French) allow an adverb (Adv) to intervene between

1296-463: A three-way aspect contrast in the past: the aorist , the perfect and the imperfect. Both aorist and imperfect verbs can represent a past event: through contrast, the imperfect verb often implies a longer duration (e.g. 'they urged him' vs. 'they persuaded him'). The aorist participle represents the first event of a two-event sequence and the present participle represents an ongoing event at the time of another event. Perfect verbs stood for past actions if

1368-779: A variety of aspects and moods. Arabic verbs have past and non-past; future can be indicated by a prefix. Korean verbs have a variety of affixed forms which can be described as representing present, past and future tenses, although they can alternatively be considered to be aspectual. Similarly, Japanese verbs are described as having present and past tenses, although they may be analysed as aspects. Some Wu Chinese languages, such as Shanghainese , use grammatical particles to mark some tenses. Other Chinese languages and many other East Asian languages generally lack inflection and are considered to be tenseless languages , although they often have aspect markers which convey certain information about time reference. For examples of languages with

1440-475: A verb stem and adapting them to endings. Endings may vary according to the speech role, the number and the gender of the subject or an object. Sometimes, verb groups function as a unit and supplement inflection for tense (see Latin periphrases ). For details on verb structure, see Latin tenses and Latin conjugation . The paradigms for tenses in Ancient Greek are similar to the ones in Latin, but with

1512-438: Is Mwera , a Bantu language of Tanzania. It is also suggested that in 17th-century French, the passé composé served as a hodiernal past. Tenses that contrast with hodiernals, by referring to the past before today or the future after today, are called pre-hodiernal and post-hodiernal respectively. Some languages also have a crastinal tense , a future tense referring specifically to tomorrow (found in some Bantu languages); or

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1584-469: Is subject–verb–object . Occasionally, a subject may occur out of its usual position, in which case it is marked with na : Personal pronouns are distinguished by person and number . They are not distinguished by gender . The basic pronouns differ substantially between dialects: The dual or plural form of "you" is occasionally used in place of the singular form to show extreme respect. Nouns in Apma are generally not preceded by articles . Plurality

1656-402: Is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs , particularly in their conjugation patterns. The main tenses found in many languages include the past , present , and future . Some languages have only two distinct tenses, such as past and nonpast , or future and nonfuture . There are also tenseless languages, like most of

1728-587: Is a language that does not have a grammatical category of tense. Tenseless languages can and do refer to time , but they do so using lexical items such as adverbs or verbs, or by using combinations of aspect , mood , and words that establish time reference. Examples of tenseless languages are Burmese , Dyirbal , most varieties of Chinese , Malay (including Indonesian ), Thai , Maya (linguistic nomenclature: "Yukatek Maya"), Vietnamese and in some analyses Greenlandic (Kalaallisut) and Guaraní . The study of modern languages has been greatly influenced by

1800-502: Is absent when the verb begins with any consonant other than r .) For example, in Suru Mwerani: Dual (two-person) forms consist of the plural forms with ru (or ri in Suru Kavian) inserted after the tense/aspect/mood marker: There is a pattern of verb-consonant mutation whereby v at the start of a verb changes to b , and w changes to bw , in certain aspects/moods: In northern and archaic varieties of Apma, there

1872-801: Is also mutation of k to g , and of t to d . Particles that can occur in a verb phrase include: The direct object, if one is present, immediately follows the verb. When the object is inanimate and already known, it need not be stated explicitly: The passive voice can be formed by attaching the suffix -an to the verb: When giving instructions, verbs are preceded simply by the 2nd person subject pronoun ko or karu "you": Many verbs in Apma have distinct transitive and intransitive forms. (These distinctions have been lost to some extent in Suru Kavian dialect.) For example, in Suru Mwerani: In Suru Mwerani dialect, and to

1944-561: Is indicated by placing the pronoun nii ("them") or a number after the noun: Nouns may be either free , or directly possessed . Directly possessed nouns are suffixed to indicate whom an item belongs to. For example: Possession may also be indicated by the use of possessive classifiers , separate words that occur before or after the noun and take possessive suffixes. These classifiers are: The possessive suffixes are as follows: In Suru Kavian dialect, vowels in certain directly possessed nouns and possessive classifiers change according to

2016-458: Is named after the local word for "what" or "something". Locally it is usually referred to simply as dalekte "language" or daleda "our language". Many people from other areas of Vanuatu recognise the language by the catchphrase te gabis meaning "good" or "OK", or refer informally to its speakers as wakin , an Apma term of address for brothers or friends. Some linguists treat the Apma sound p as an allophone of b , and thus write

2088-429: Is not related to the adjective tense , which comes from Latin tensus , the perfect passive participle of tendere , "stretch". In modern linguistic theory, tense is understood as a category that expresses ( grammaticalizes ) time reference; namely one which, using grammatical means, places a state or action in time. Nonetheless, in many descriptions of languages, particularly in traditional European grammar,

2160-408: Is used to express modality , which includes such properties as uncertainty, evidentiality , and obligation. Commonly encountered moods include the indicative , subjunctive , and conditional . Mood can be bound up with tense, aspect, or both, in particular verb forms. Hence, certain languages are sometimes analysed as having a single tense–aspect–mood (TAM) system, without separate manifestation of

2232-478: The Chinese languages , though they can possess a future and nonfuture system typical of Sino-Tibetan languages. In recent work Maria Bittner and Judith Tonhauser have described the different ways in which tenseless languages nonetheless mark time. On the other hand, some languages make finer tense distinctions, such as remote vs recent past, or near vs remote future. Tenses generally express time relative to

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2304-626: The Indo-European family have developed systems either with two morphological tenses (present or "non-past", and past) or with three (present, past and future). The tenses often form part of entangled tense–aspect–mood conjugation systems. Additional tenses, tense–aspect combinations, etc. can be provided by compound constructions containing auxiliary verbs. The Germanic languages (which include English) have present (non-past) and past tenses formed morphologically, with future and other additional forms made using auxiliaries. In standard German ,

2376-450: The historical present is a use of the present tense to refer to past events. The phenomenon of fake tense is common crosslinguistically as a means of marking counterfactuality in conditionals and wishes. Not all languages have tense: tenseless languages include Chinese and Dyirbal . Some languages have all three basic tenses (the past , present , and future ), while others have only two: some have past and nonpast tenses,

2448-726: The historical present it can talk about the past as well. These morphological tenses are marked either with a suffix ( walk(s) ~ walked ) or with ablaut ( sing(s) ~ sang ). In some contexts, particularly in English language teaching , various tense–aspect combinations are referred to loosely as tenses. Similarly, the term "future tense" is sometimes loosely applied to cases where modals such as will are used to talk about future points in time. Proto-Indo-European verbs had present, perfect ( stative ), imperfect and aorist forms – these can be considered as representing two tenses (present and past) with different aspects . Most languages in

2520-481: The moment of speaking . In some contexts, however, their meaning may be relativized to a point in the past or future which is established in the discourse (the moment being spoken about). This is called relative (as opposed to absolute ) tense. Some languages have different verb forms or constructions which manifest relative tense, such as pluperfect ("past-in-the-past") and " future-in-the-past ". Expressions of tense are often closely connected with expressions of

2592-438: The subject , such as person , number and gender . It is consequently not always possible to identify elements that mark any specific category, such as tense, separately from the others. Languages that do not have grammatical tense, such as most Sinitic languages , express time reference chiefly by lexical means – through adverbials , time phrases, and so on. (The same is done in tensed languages, to supplement or reinforce

2664-592: The French passé composé , which has an auxiliary verb together with the inflected past participle form of the main verb; and the Irish past tense , where the proclitic do (in various surface forms) appears in conjunction with the affixed or ablaut-modified past tense form of the main verb. As has already been mentioned, indications of tense are often bound up with indications of other verbal categories, such as aspect and mood . The conjugation patterns of verbs often also reflect agreement with categories pertaining to

2736-403: The action occurs in a recurrent temporal period of the day ("in the morning", "during the day", "at night", "until dawn" etc) or of the year ("in winter"). Some languages have cyclic tense systems. This is a form of temporal marking where tense is given relative to a reference point or reference span. In Burarra , for example, events that occurred earlier on the day of speaking are marked with

2808-425: The approximate threshold below which two forms are considered separate languages rather than mere dialects). However, in their 2001 survey, Lynch & Crowley did not recognise Sowa as a language, noting that Tryon's data suffered from significant margins of error. Using an updated word list, Andrew Gray calculated the cognacy of Sowa and Ske at 82%. Sowa's status as a language is therefore borderline if considered on

2880-452: The aspects implied by those terms. Latin is traditionally described as having six verb paradigms for tense (the Latin for "tense" being tempus , plural tempora ): Imperfect tense verbs represent a past process combined with so called imperfective aspect , that is, they often stand for an ongoing past action or state at a past point in time (see secondary present ) or represent habitual actions (see Latin tenses with modality ) (e.g. 'he

2952-494: The basis of cognacy figures alone. However, local people perceive Sowa very much as a distinct language and not as a Ske dialect, and there are significant grammatical and phonological differences between Sowa and Ske. The consonants of Sowa were b , d , g , k , l , m , n , ng (as in English "singer"), p , r , s , t , bilabial v , w , z , and labiovelar bw , mw and pw . Sowa appears to have lacked h , although this letter occasionally appears in records of Sowa as

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3024-419: The case of the verb 'be' (including its use as an auxiliary), also present tense. Persian , an Indo-Iranian language , has past and non-past forms, with additional aspectual distinctions. Future can be expressed using an auxiliary, but almost never in non-formal context. Colloquially the perfect suffix -e can be added to past tenses to indicate that an action is speculative or reported (e.g. "it seems that he

3096-562: The category of aspect ; sometimes what are traditionally called tenses (in languages such as Latin ) may in modern analysis be regarded as combinations of tense with aspect. Verbs are also often conjugated for mood , and since in many cases the three categories are not manifested separately, some languages may be described in terms of a combined tense–aspect–mood (TAM) system. The English noun tense comes from Old French tens "time" (spelled temps in modern French through deliberate archaization), from Latin tempus , "time". It

3168-487: The compound past ( Perfekt ) has replaced the simple morphological past in most contexts. The Romance languages (descendants of Latin) have past, present and future morphological tenses, with additional aspectual distinction in the past. French is an example of a language where, as in German, the simple morphological perfective past ( passé simple ) has mostly given way to a compound form ( passé composé ) . Irish ,

3240-524: The first of these two elements is the aspect marker and the second element (the copula) is the common tense-mood marker. Hindi-Urdu has 3 grammatical aspectsː Habitual , Perfective , and Progressive ; and 5 grammatical moodsː Indicative , Presumptive , Subjunctive , Contrafactual , and Imperative . (Seeː Hindi verbs ) In the Slavic languages , verbs are intrinsically perfective or imperfective. In Russian and some other languages in

3312-423: The following tense/aspect/mood markers: The full forms of these markers are used in the 3rd person singular (where there is no subject pronoun): Elsewhere, short forms of these markers are suffixed to the subject pronoun: The imperfective marker alters to some extent to match the sound of the verb it is attached to. It is usually absent altogether when the verb begins with b or bw . (In Suru Kavian dialect, it

3384-413: The future relative to the time under consideration, as with the English " future-in-the-past ": (he said that) he would go . Relative tense forms are also sometimes analysed as combinations of tense with aspect: the perfect aspect in the anterior case, or the prospective aspect in the posterior case. Some languages, such as Nez perce or Cavineña also have periodic tense markers that encode that

3456-526: The future tense is formed by the shortened version of the present of the verb hteti (ще) and it just adds present tense forms of person suffixes: -m (I), -š (you), -ø (he,she,it), -me (we), -te (you, plural), -t (they). Finnish and Hungarian , both members of the Uralic language family, have morphological present (non-past) and past tenses. The Hungarian verb van ("to be") also has a future form. Turkish verbs conjugate for past, present and future, with

3528-500: The grammar of the Classical languages, since early grammarians, often monks, had no other reference point to describe their language. Latin terminology is often used to describe modern languages, sometimes with a change of meaning, as with the application of "perfect" to forms in English that do not necessarily have perfective meaning, or the words Imperfekt and Perfekt to German past tense forms that mostly lack any relationship to

3600-696: The group, perfective verbs have past and "future tenses", while imperfective verbs have past, present and "future", the imperfective "future" being a compound tense in most cases. The "future tense" of perfective verbs is formed in the same way as the present tense of imperfective verbs. However, in South Slavic languages , there may be a greater variety of forms – Bulgarian , for example, has present, past (both "imperfect" and "aorist") and "future tenses", for both perfective and imperfective verbs, as well as perfect forms made with an auxiliary (see Bulgarian verbs ). However it doesn't have real future tense, because

3672-405: The indicative present conjugations in older forms of Hind-Urdu) by adding a future future suffix - gā that declines for gender and the number of the noun that the pronoun refers to. The forms of gā are derived from the perfective participle forms of the verb "to go," jāna . The conjugations of the indicative perfect past and the indicative imperfect past are derived from participles (just like

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3744-443: The language's name as Abma . However, this interpretation of the language's phonology is disputed, and locally Apma is the preferred spelling. Modern Apma has three well-defined dialects: Mwerani and rabwanga are the words for "today" in their respective dialects, while bo and kavi are the words for "pig". Two other probable Apma dialects, Asuk (or Asa ) in the south-west and Wolwolan (or Volvoluana ) in

3816-505: The language's north-western boundary, and its range extended southwards to a creek near the village of Levizendam. Following the depopulation of Pentecost that occurred after the introduction of European diseases, men from Sowa-speaking areas were married women from other parts of Pentecost, who were mostly Apma speakers. As a result, by the 1960s, Apma had totally replaced Sowa as the predominant local language. The last native Sowa speaker, Maurice Tabi of Vanvat village, died in 2000. Today,

3888-481: The latter covering both present and future times (as in Arabic , Japanese , and, in some analyses, English ), whereas others such as Greenlandic , Quechua , and Nivkh have future and nonfuture . Some languages have four or more tenses, making finer distinctions either in the past (e.g. remote vs. recent past) or in the future (e.g. near vs. remote future). The six-tense language Kalaw Lagaw Ya of Australia has

3960-485: The main verb, or a multi-word construction , or both in combination. Inflection may involve the use of affixes , such as the -ed ending that marks the past tense of English regular verbs , but can also entail stem modifications, such as ablaut , as found as in the strong verbs in English and other Germanic languages, or reduplication . Multi-word tense constructions often involve auxiliary verbs or clitics . Examples which combine both types of tense marking include

4032-526: The morpheme as seen in. Ba, COMM te= ba 3SG . PFV = NEG1 sab step rotvi Sowa language Sowa was the original language of south-central Pentecost island in Vanuatu . In the 20th century it was totally displaced by Apma , a neighbouring language. Sowa was closely related to Ske , another south Pentecost language. Sowa was originally spoken on both western and eastern sides of Pentecost. The river at Melsisi formed

4104-449: The negative, is no longer the case). Luganda also has tenses meaning "so far" and "not yet". Some languages have special tense forms that are used to express relative tense . Tenses that refer to the past relative to the time under consideration are called anterior ; these include the pluperfect (for the past relative to a past time) and the future perfect (for the past relative to a future time). Similarly, posterior tenses refer to

4176-622: The north, are now extinct. 6 vowel sounds are present in Apma: 20 consonants are in Apma: The consonant phonemes of Apma are b , d , g , h , k , l , m , n , ng (as in English "singer"), r , s , t , ts (or j ), bilabial v , w , and labiovelar bw and mw . The consonants v and w are realised as p where they occur at the end of a syllable; b may also be devoiced to p when next to an unvoiced consonant, as in -tpo "lie down". Clusters of consonants cannot occur within

4248-505: The past tense formation in Slavic languages ) and hence they agree with the grammatical number and the gender of noun which the pronoun refers to and not the pronoun itself. The perfect past doubles as the perfective aspect participle and the imperfect past conjugations act as the copula to mark imperfect past when used with the aspectual participles. Hindi-Urdu has an overtly marked tense-aspect-mood system. Periphrastic Hindi-Urdu verb forms (aspectual verb forms) consist of two elements,

4320-437: The pattern illustrated below. This does not occur in other dialects: A verb may be transformed into a noun by the addition of a nominalising suffix -an : Modifiers generally come after a noun, although those derived from nouns may come before: Verbs in Apma are usually preceded by a subject pronoun and by a marker indicating the tense , aspect and mood of the action. The subject pronouns are as follows: Apma has

4392-479: The remote past, the recent past, the today past, the present, the today/near future and the remote future. Some languages, like the Amazonian Cubeo language , have a historical past tense, used for events perceived as historical. Tenses that refer specifically to "today" are called hodiernal tenses ; these can be either past or future. Apart from Kalaw Lagaw Ya, another language which features such tenses

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4464-415: The result is still present (e.g. 'I have found it') or for present states resulting from a past event (e.g. 'I remember'). English has only two morphological tenses: the present (or non-past ), as in he goes , and the past (or preterite ), as in he went . The non-past usually references the present, but sometimes references the future (as in the bus leaves tomorrow ). In special uses such as

4536-414: The same verb forms as events that happened in the far past, while events that happened yesterday (compared to the moment of speech) are marked with the same forms as events in the present. This can be thought of as a system where events are marked as prior or contemporaneous to points of reference on a timeline. Tense is normally indicated by the use of a particular verb form – either an inflected form of

4608-420: The scene. Verbs in Apma can be linked together in a variety of serial verb constructions . Negation is marked by the discontinuous morpheme ba…nga . The ba always occurs before the verb and the nga occurs after the verb or after the direct object should one occur as seen in (1) where 'step' is the verb and 'breadfruit branch' the direct object. In the absence of a direct object the verb alone sits within

4680-552: The term "tense" is applied to verb forms or constructions that express not merely position in time, but also additional properties of the state or action – particularly aspectual or modal properties. The category of aspect expresses how a state or action relates to time – whether it is seen as a complete event, an ongoing or repeated situation, etc. Many languages make a distinction between perfective aspect (denoting complete events) and imperfective aspect (denoting ongoing or repeated situations); some also have other aspects, such as

4752-607: The three categories. The term tense , then, particularly in less formal contexts, is sometimes used to denote any combination of tense proper, aspect, and mood. As regards English , there are many verb forms and constructions which combine time reference with continuous and/or perfect aspect, and with indicative, subjunctive or conditional mood. Particularly in some English language teaching materials, some or all of these forms can be referred to simply as tenses (see below ). Particular tense forms need not always carry their basic time-referential meaning in every case. For instance,

4824-399: The time information conveyed by the choice of tense.) Time information is also sometimes conveyed as a secondary feature by markers of other categories, as with the aspect markers 了 le and 過 guò , which in most cases place an action in past time. However, much time information is conveyed implicitly by context – it is therefore not always necessary, when translating from a tensed to

4896-728: The word atna ("absent"): In the imperative , verbs could occur on their own (unlike in Apma and Ske , in which they are always preceded by a subject pronoun). Verbs beginning with a pair of consonants, which would have been difficult to pronounce on their own, acquired an extra vowel in this situation: Transitive and intransitive verb forms were distinguished, like in Apma and Ske . Transitive verbs were commonly followed with -né : Like neighbouring languages, Sowa made extensive use of stative verbs for descriptive purposes. Verbs in Sowa could be linked together in serial verb constructions . Grammatical tense In grammar , tense

4968-458: Was David Walsh, who collected a vocabulary list in 1969. Andrew Gray, a British schoolteacher at Ranwadi College , worked with speakers' children in the late 2000s to try to reconstruct the basics of the language. Some people in the former Sowa area see the language as a part of their cultural heritage and lament its loss. There is talk of reviving Sowa, although this is not a high priority for most local people, and records are insufficient to allow

5040-503: Was doing", "they say that he was doing"). A similar feature is found in Turkish. (For details, see Persian verbs .) Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), an Indo-Aryan language , has indicative perfect past and indicative future forms, while the indicative present and indicative imperfect past conjugations exist only for the verb honā (to be). The indicative future is constructed using the future subjunctive conjugations (which used to be

5112-754: Was eating', 'he used to eat'). The perfect tense combines the meanings of a simple past ('he ate') with that of an English perfect tense ('he has eaten'), which in ancient Greek are two different tenses (aorist and perfect). The pluperfect, the perfect and the future perfect may also realise relative tenses , standing for events that are past at the time of another event (see secondary past ): for instance, mortuus erat , mortuus est , mortuus erit may stand for respectively ' he had died ', ' he has died ' and ' he will have died '. Latin verbs are inflected for tense and aspect together with mood (indicative, subjunctive, infinitive, and imperative) and voice (active or passive). Most verbs can be built by selecting

5184-513: Was indicated by placing the pronoun néé ("them") or a number after the noun. Nouns could be either free , or directly-possessed . Directly-possessed nouns were suffixed to indicate whom an item belonged to. For example: Possession could also be indicated by the use of possessive classifiers , separate words that occur before or after the noun and take possessive suffixes. These classifiers were similar to those of Apma : The possessive suffixes were as follows: A verb could be transformed into

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