Tense and Aspect
(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:
| 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:
| Gloss | Sereer | Gloss | Sereer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1sg- 'I run' | ʄuufaam | 1pl- 'we run' | iƈuufaa |
| 2sg- 'you run' | ʄuufaa' | 2pl- 'you all run' | nuƈuufaa |
| 3sg- 'he runs' | aʄuufaa | 3pl- 'they run' | aƈuufaa |
Past Tense
Sample past tense verbal paradigm:
| Gloss | Sereer | Gloss | Sereer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1sg- 'I ran' | ʄuuf'aam | 1pl- 'we ran' | iƈuuf'aa |
| 2sg- 'you ran' | ʄuuf'aa' | 2pl- 'you all ran' | nuƈuuf'aa |
| 3sg 'he ran' | ʄuuf'aa | 3pl- 'they ran' | aƈuuf'aa |
Past Progressive Tense
Sample past progressive tense paradigm:
| Gloss | Sereer | Gloss | Sereer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1sg- 'I was running' | ʄuufeegam | 1pl- 'we were running' | iƈuufeega |
| 2sg- 'you were running' | ʄuufeega' | 2pl- 'you all were running' | nuƈuufeega |
| 3sg 'he was running' | ʄuufeegaa | 3pl- 'they were running' | aƈuufeega |
