Difference between revisions of "Tense and Aspect"

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(Erin's original writing, editing in progress ~ KC)
 
(Erin's original writing, editing in progress ~ KC)
https://corpus.linguistics.berkeley.edu/sereer/wiki/index.php/Inflectional_Verbal_Morphology#Tense_and_aspect
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Return to [https://corpus.linguistics.berkeley.edu/sereer/wiki/index.php/Inflectional_Verbal_Morphology#Tense_and_aspect Verbal Morphology]
 
 
===Tense===
 
===Tense===
 
Matrix verbs are obligatorily marked for either tense or aspect in Sereer, and are often marked for both. The three tense markers are suffixes:
 
Matrix verbs are obligatorily marked for either tense or aspect in Sereer, and are often marked for both. The three tense markers are suffixes:
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===Aspect===
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====Perfective Aspect====
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====Past Imperfective====
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====Non-Past Imperfective====
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====Prospective Aspect====
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====Other Minor Apectual Phenomena====

Latest revision as of 12:03, 30 April 2013

(Erin's original writing, editing in progress ~ KC) Return to Verbal Morphology

Tense

Matrix verbs are obligatorily marked for either tense or aspect in Sereer, and are often marked for both. The three tense markers are suffixes:

Typical subject marking:
Gloss Sereer
Simple past -'a
Proximal -aa
Progressive past -eega

The proximal tense marks events that happened temporally close to the speech act, which includes the present or recent past. Events outside of the recent past-present time frame cannot be marked with -aa.

The future aspect when marked with xan, however, can take -aa marking to indicate future progressive. xan can also appear by itself without any suffix aspect marking, and is glossed as the simple future. Note: Another pre-verbal morph, kan, behaves similarly to xan with regards to subject marking and position relative to the verb, but whose semantic applications are quite different. So far, the best gloss of kan is as a marker of predicate focus.

The proclitic progressive aspect marker xe/we must co-occur with either proximal tense or progressive past tense. With proximal tense -aa, xe/we is glossed as present progressive, and is past progressive with -eega. xe/we has special person marking; see the section on subject marking above.

Proximal Tense

Sample proximal tense verbal paradigm:

Proximal tense:
Gloss Sereer Gloss Sereer
1sg- 'I run' ʄuufaam 1pl- 'we run' uufaa
2sg- 'you run' ʄuufaa' 2pl- 'you all run' nuƈuufaa
3sg- 'he runs' aʄuufaa 3pl- 'they run' uufaa

Past Tense

Sample past tense verbal paradigm:

Past tense:
Gloss Sereer Gloss Sereer
1sg- 'I ran' ʄuuf'aam 1pl- 'we ran' uuf'aa
2sg- 'you ran' ʄuuf'aa' 2pl- 'you all ran' nuƈuuf'aa
3sg 'he ran' ʄuuf'aa 3pl- 'they ran' uuf'aa

Past Progressive Tense

Sample past progressive tense paradigm:

Past progressive tense:
Gloss Sereer Gloss Sereer
1sg- 'I was running' ʄuufeegam 1pl- 'we were running' uufeega
2sg- 'you were running' ʄuufeega' 2pl- 'you all were running' nuƈuufeega
3sg 'he was running' ʄuufeegaa 3pl- 'they were running' uufeega

Aspect

Perfective Aspect

Past Imperfective

Non-Past Imperfective

Prospective Aspect

Other Minor Apectual Phenomena