VOS: Temporal Morphology

[qiihoskeh]

Last Edited: 2006.Jul.19 Wed

Temporal Word Classes

Content words fall into three classes: those that are basically imperfective, those that are basically perfective, and those that are tenseless. The first class, called I-Verbs (or stative verbs), include lexical verbs such as "want" and "know" and lexical adjectives. The second class, called P-Verbs (or active verbs), include most lexical verbs. The third class contains the lexical nouns. The imperfectives of P-Verbs are formed using a prefix Ipf- (pa-).

Imperative Mood

The imperative mood is marked using a suffix -Imp (-e). Usually, there's no person marking; 2nd person indefinite number is implied. See Actant Morphology for imperative mood person marking. The time of the imperative is relatively future.

Tense Marking

Past, present, and future times are distinguished. In addition, for the past and future, definite time is distinguished from indefinite time. Definite time means that the action or state is applicable at some time known to the speaker which the addressee is expected to know. Indefinite time means that the action or state is applicable at any time. The actual time indicated depends on tense suffixes (-o, -a, -t(u), and -ta), the aspect and mood, and on context. Ignoring the last, the possible combinations of tense, aspect, and mood are shown in the following table:

Aspect	Tense		Mood	P-Verb	I-Verb
Imperfective	Definite	Present	Indicative	pahox	pes
		Past		pahoxtu	pestu
		Future		pahoxta	pesta
			Imperative	pahoxte	peste
	Indefinite	Past	Indicative		peso
		Future			pesa
			Imperative		pese
Perfective	Definite	Past	Indicative	hoxtu
		Future		hoxta
			Imperative	hoxte
	Indefinite	Past *	Indicative	hox
		Future		hoxa
			Imperative	hoxe

* The perfective indefinite past can also be relative present outside of a main clause and even relative future, if an auxiliary verb so dictates. Examples:

2S-(sing)	"You sang."	absolute past
k-sal.
1S-(hear) CC-2S-(sing)	"I heard you sing."	relative present
mu-hox la-k-sal.
1S-(want) CC-2S-(sing)	"I want you to sing."	relative future
m-pes la-k-sal.
2S-(run) Adv-(sing)	"You ran singing."	relative present
k-tap i-sal.

Additional Aspects

The retrospective aspect is marked using the prefix Prf- (ce-) and the prospective aspect using the prefix Pro- (fu-). For P-Verbs, these replace the imperfective prefix. For I-Verbs, they're added to the imperfective definite forms.

The habitual aspect is marked using the prefix Habt- (fa-). The iterative aspect is marked using the prefix Iter- (ra-). These are most often applied to P-Verbs, making them I-Verbs.