GB121 - grambank/grambank GitHub Wiki
Can tense be marked by an inflecting word (‘auxiliary verb’)?
Summary
This feature covers all tenses (present, past, and future) and aims to capture phonologically free elements that inflect (i.e. change form depending on person, number and other categories of the core arguments). These markers are often described as ‘auxiliary verbs’ in the literature, but are also analyzed under other labels by some authors (such as STAMP morphemes (STAMP = Subject-Tense-Aspect-Mood-Polarity) or inflecting pronouns). We are interested in grammatical marking, i.e. dedicated, productive and obligatory marking.
There are instances where TAM can be expressed by a combination of an affix and auxiliary or particle. For example, some grammarians state that tense is expressed by a certain form on the verbal root and an auxiliary. If this is a productive and obligatory way of expressing tense then such a construction triggers 1 for both this feature (GB121) and the features on bound tense marking (GB082/GB083/GB084). If not all parts of the discontinuous marking are necessary for expressing a tense, then only consider the marking that is obligatory.
Procedure
- Look up the section on tense marking in the grammatical description.
- Consider all marking of tense, e.g. not only past tense.
- If you do not find any inflecting words expressing tense, such as auxiliary verbs or elements analyzed as pronouns that take TAM marking, code as 0.
- If there is an inflecting word that clearly expresses tense, code the language as 1.
- If not clear whether the inflecting word marks tense, code the language as ?.
Examples
Swedish (ISO 639-3: swe, Glottolog: swed1254)
Swedish uses an auxiliary construction derived from the verb ‘to come’ (kommer) for marking future tense (Teleman et al. 1999: 244). The construction also involves the infinitive form of the main verb and the infinitive marker (att). Swedish is coded as 1 for this feature.
| Present | Future | |
|---|---|---|
| ‘swim’ | simma-r | kommer att simma |
| ‘dance’ | dansa-r | kommer att dansa |
Further reading
Comrie, Bernard. 1985. Tense. Cambridge University Press
Dahl, Östen. 1985. Tense and aspect systems. Oxford: Blackwell.
Dahl, Östen & Viveka Velupillai. 2013. The past tense. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
References
Teleman, Ulf, Staffan Hellberg & Erik Andersson. 1999. Svenska akademiens grammatik, vol. 4. Stockholm: Svenska akademien.
Related Features
- GB082 Is there overt morphological marking of present tense on verbs?
- GB083 Is there overt morphological marking on the verb dedicated to past tense?
- GB084 Is there overt morphological marking on the verb dedicated to future tense?
- GB086 Is a morphological distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect available on verbs?
- GB110 Is there verb suppletion for tense or aspect?
- GB120 Can aspect be marked by an inflecting word (‘auxiliary verb’)?
- GB309 Are there multiple past or multiple future tenses, distinguishing distance from Time of Reference?
- GB520 Can aspect be marked by a non-inflecting word (‘auxiliary particle’)?
- GB521 Can tense be marked by a non-inflecting word (‘auxiliary particle’)?
Patron
Hedvig Skirgård