# Are past tenses universally more distinct than future tenses?



## Dymn

It seems like many languages like to lump together the present and future tenses (non-past), and leave the past separate. I think this is the case for Japanese and Finnish.

Other languages have a more transparent and analytic way to form the future tense than the past. For example, _will _+ zero-form in English, _werden _+ infinitive in German, future of _byt' _+ infinitive in Russian, infinitive + _avere _in Romance languages, and so on. All these languages have a more opaque and synthetic past tense conjugation. Greek can also be included I think, I guess this is a feature of Standard Average European.

In Spanish there is/was a future subjunctive but fell out of use, unlike the imperfect (~ past) subjunctive which is still in use. I don't know if Portuguese keeps it.

My question is whether this is something rather universal and what languages are there which oppose this idea.

Thanks


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## berndf

Dymn said:


> For example, _will _+ zero-form in English, _werden _+ infinitive in German


Germanic languages historically had only two tenses, past and non-past. Modern German has a future tenses but in colloquial speech it is rarely ever used, only if the 1) time isn't clear by context and 2) it is important to the message the speaker tries to convey if present or future is meant. The old logic that past and non-past is the only things that always needs to be expressed is quite alive.

Semitic languages distinguish essentially between past and future. Modern Semitic languages have developed different ways to express present.

In both, the Indo-European and the Semitic language groups, tenses seem to have developed out of two fundamental aspects, viz. static vs. dynamic.


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## ahvalj

Another thing is that preterites are usually more stable heterochronically, i. e. they may persist when futures get renewed (as in your Future Subjunctive example). For example, the Latin Future, which itself was the former Conjunctive (_dormiēs_), disappeared in Romance, replaced e. g. by Infinitive + _habeō_ (_dormirás_) and in some varieties of Spanish (e. g. in Argentina) it is in the process of being replaced again by _ir + a_ + Infinitive (_vas a dormir_). In contrast, the Proto-Indo-European Perfect (not a proper preterite, yet anyway) and the Aorist persisted in Latin (_dormī(vi)stī, _a merger of both Aorist, _-is-_, and Perfect, _-v-_ and _-tī_) and are still alive in Spanish (_dormiste_).

Speaking of morphologically distinct tense forms, of course, anything can happen in the languages. For example, Polish has a single _morphological_ type of Preterite, that in _-l-, robił, zrobił _(the former Present Resultative of imperfective and perfective verbs), whereas it has three _morphologically_ distinct futures: _będzie robić _(the proper new Future of imperfective verbs),_ będzie robił _(the former Future Resultative of imperfective verbs) and _zrobi _(the former Present of perfective verbs).


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## Olaszinhok

Dymn said:


> Spanish there is/was a future subjunctive but fell out of use, unlike the imperfect (~ past) subjunctive which is still in use. I don't know if Portuguese keeps it.



The future subjunctive is very common in contemporary Portuguese unlike Spanish.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> Another thing is that preterites are usually more stable heterochronically


I am not sure this matters. If we take again colloquial German with its de facto two tense system, preterite is almost completely lost. Romance languages like Franch and Italian have also lost the preterite except in literary registers.


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## Olaszinhok

berndf said:


> I am not sure this matters. If we take again colloquial German with its de facto two tense system, preterite is almost completely lost. Romance languages like Franch and Italian have also lost the preterite except in literary registers.




I'm sorry but as an Italian I have to disagree, there is a clear difference between French and Italian in this regard. Italian preterite is still used in speech in many areas of the country. The only area where the synthetic preterite died out is in the North of Italy. However, in formal Italian the preterite is alive everywhere.


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## berndf

Olaszinhok said:


> I'm sorry but as an Italian I have to disagree, there is a clear difference between French and Italian in this regard. Italian preterite is still used in speech in many areas of the country. The only area where the synthetic preterite died out is in the North of Italy. However, in formal Italian the preterite is alive everywhere.


Interesting, thank you. I have to admit my exposure to colloquial Italian is almost entirely northern. Now that you are mentioning it, many years ago a German colleagues of partly Calabrian ancestry told me the same.


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## entangledbank

Some Pama-Nyungan languages are an exception to this near-universal, in that they have a future tense and a non-future tense. I don't know any more detail about how they make time distinctions in the non-future.


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## Dymn

berndf said:


> Romance languages like Franch and Italian have also lost the preterite except in literary registers.


And so does Catalan which has lost it to a _anar_ "to go" + infinitive structure, which is quite curious since this same structure usually implies future and not past. But anyway all these languages keep the imperfect tense which dates back to at least Latin and always implies past even if from a different point in terms of aspect.



entangledbank said:


> Some Pama-Nyungan languages are an exception to this near-universal, in that they have a future tense and a non-future tense. I don't know any more detail about how they make time distinctions in the non-future.


Thanks!


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## Sardokan1.0

In Sardinian the "Preterite" has merged with "Imperfect", they are suited for both situations, the Sardinian "Preterite" sounds like a mix of Latin "Imperfect" and "Perfect".

example :

Imperfect / Preterite of Andare (to go)


Spoiler: Andare



Andaìo, Andaìa
Andaìsti, Andaìas
Andaìat
Andaìmis, Andaìmus
Andaìtis, Andaìzis
Andaìan



While the Indicative Present is :


Spoiler: Andare



Ando
Àndas
Àndat
Andàmus
Andàdes
Àndan


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## Olaszinhok

Sardokan1.0 said:


> In Sardinian the "Preterite" has merged with "Imperfect", they are suited for both situations, the Sardinian "Preterite" sounds like a mix of Latin "Imperfect" and "Perfect



Hello. Are you sure? This is probably true from a morphological point of view, but I'm pretty sure that Sardinian uses an analytic preterite (like most Romance languages) for completed actions in the past:_ apo cantau, as cantau: _I've sung; you've sung.


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## Sardokan1.0

Olaszinhok said:


> Hello. Are you sure? This is probably true from a morphological point of view, but I'm pretty sure that Sardinian uses an analytic preterite (like most Romance languages) for completed actions in the past:_ apo cantau, as cantau: _I've sung; you've sung.



It's also like that, the example you mentioned is in Campidanese (southern Sardinian), in Logudorese (central-northern Sardinian) is _happo cantadu, has cantadu, etc.etc. _in Nuorese (central-eastern Sardinian) is _happo cantatu, has cantatu,_ etc.etc. Depends on the kind of phrase.


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## Nino83

Sicilian, like the other Romance languages, lost the Latin synthetic future (_cantabo_) but has not acquired the new analytic future (_cantare + ho > canterò_), while the conditional tense is new (for example the sentence _si vulissi, cantiría_ = if I wanted, I'd sing, was rendered with the double subjunctive, _si vulissi, cantassi_, in less recent times) so we have two past tenses (imperfect and preterite, while present perfect is not used in Sicilian, even if we have the pluperfect, _avía cantatu_) and the present tense.
imperfect: _cantava_
preterite: _cantai_
present: _cantu_


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## J.F. de TROYES

berndf said:


> .
> 
> Semitic languages distinguish essentially between past and future. Modern Semitic languages have developed different ways to express present.
> 
> In both, the Indo-European and the Semitic language groups, tenses seem to have developed out of two fundamental aspects, viz. static vs. dynamic.



It's true that semitic verbal systems are originally based on the aspectual difference between perfective ( with suffixes as personal markers ) and imperfective ( with prefixes as personal markers ) , a feature shared by Biblical Hebrew and Classical Arabic. In Modern Standard Arabic, the perfective expresses the past tense and the imperfective the present tense , while the particle sa- ( or more rarely, sawfa- ) may be added to the present tense to express the future, if necessary , the same as in Classical Arabic . Also Amharic opposes the present-future tense ( incompleted actions or happening now ) and past ( already completed actions ). So I think the main difference in Semitic languages is between past and present, even though Modern Hebrew uses the imperfective forms with a future value, as opposed to the present participle for the present tense.


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## Nino83

The site wals.info is very useful, also in this case.
past tense
inflectional future
In East and South East Asia, only Japanese and Korean (and Mongolian, if you include it in East Asia) have a past tense while the other languages like Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Vietnamese, Austronesian (except Tagalog, Pangasinan, Tukang Besi, Buli, which have a future tense and some Polynesian languages like Maori, Fijian, Tahitian and Rapanui, which have a past tense) have neither past nor future tenses.

According to these maps, it seems that some have a present/future distintion but lack a present/past distinction:
some languages spoken in Siberia: Nivkh, Yukaghir, Chukchi
West Greenlandic (but probably it has lost it because Inuktitut has both past and future, with more than one past tense)
Iroquoian (Seneca, Oneida), Tanoan (Kiowa) and Caddoan (Wichita) languages
some Niger-Congo languages in West Africa

Among these languages, those with no distinction between past and present are less (88) than those with no distinction between future and present (112), so the past tense seems to be a little more common than the (inflectional) future tense.


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## J.F. de TROYES

Burmese can be added to the languages that don't grammatically differentiate past and present. In an affirmative verbal sentence the verb cannot be used without adding a "modal marker" to the stem (except for the imperative ). There are three main markers : one for the present/past , another for the future, the third for actions that have just been completed. So without any context, _sà-deh_ means _I eat_ or _I ate_ while _sà-meh_ means _I will eat_ and _sà-bi ,_ _I've just eaten_.


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## apmoy70

MoGr has only the Aorist/Preterite & Imperfect tenses synthetically-formed, the Perfect tense is expressed by periphrastic construction.

Generally speaking, MoGr distinguishes between _past_ and _non-past_ aspects of the verb, and has two different moods, Perfective (to show that the action is complete), and Imperfective (to show that the action is not complete); then affixes, particles, and auxiliary verbs are added to demonstrate person, number, past tense and non-past tense.
So:
-ΜοGr v. *«ακούω»* [aˈku.o] (dictionary form, 1st p. sing. Present tense) --> _to hear, obey, listen_ >
(1) Perfective mood = *«ακούσω»* [aˈkuso]
(2) Imperfective mood = *«ακούω»* [aˈku.o]

(1) The perfective mood is used in order to form the:
(A) _Aorist/Preterite tense_ e.g. *«άκουσα μουσική»* [ˈakusa musiˈci] --> _*I** listened (to) music*_ (the aorist is based on the perfective mood because the action is complete),
(B) _Future tense_ e.g. *«θα ακούσω μουσική»* [θa aˈkuso musiˈci] --> _*I* *will** listen (to) music*_ (the future is based on the perfective mood because it's an action with a start and a finish and not a continuing action; *«θα»* [θa] is the future particle, historically a contraction of the Koine *«ἐθέλω ἵνα» ĕtʰélō hínă* --> _I want to_ > Byz. Gr *«θέλω ἵνα» thélō ína* > MoGr *«θ*έλω ν*α»*),
(C) _Perfect tense_ e.g. *«έχω ακούσει πολλή μουσική»* [ˈexo aˈkusi poˈli musiˈci] --> _*I** have listened (to) alot (of) music*_ (the perfect is also based on the perfective mood because the action has been completed at some point in the past; the auxiliary *«έχω»* [ˈexo] is 1st p. sing. present tense of the v. _to have_; as one can see the MoGr Perfect tense construction has evolved similarly to the Germanic languages). 

-The imperfective mood is used in order to form the:
(D) Present tense e.g. *«ακούω μουσική»* [aˈku.o musiˈci] --> _*I **listen/**am** listening (to) music*_ (the present is based on the imperfective mood because the action is not complete yet, it's happening now),
(E) Imperfect tense e.g. *«άκου(γ)α μουσική»* [ˈaku(ɣ)a musiˈci] --> _*I* *was** listening/used to listen (to) music*_ (the imperfect is based on the imperfective mood because the action was continuing at a certain point in the past).


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## Scholiast

Greetings one and all


berndf said:


> Romance languages like Franch and Italian have also lost the preterite except in literary registers.


A footnote to this: there are contexts where American English preserves a conjugated preterite, while British English has abandoned it: 'I just took a shower' (AmE) = 'I have just taken a shower' (BrE).

Σ


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## J.F. de TROYES

apmoy70 said:


> -The imperfective mood is used in order to form the:
> (D) Present tense e.g. *«ακούω μουσική»* [aˈku.o musiˈci] --> _*I **listen/**am** listening (to) music*_ (the present is based on the imperfective mood because the action is not complete yet, it's happening now),
> (E) Imperfect tense e.g. *«άκου(γ)α μουσική»* [ˈaku(ɣ)a musiˈci] --> _*I* *was** listening/used to listen (to) music*_ (the imperfect is based on the imperfective mood because the action was continuing at a certain point in the past).



As far as I know, there is also a continuous future built on the imperfective radical . It seems to me that *θα ακούω μουσική κάθε μέρα *is also used. And it is the same for subjunctives. Am I right ?


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## apmoy70

J.F. de TROYES said:


> As far as I know, there is also a continuous future built on the imperfective radical . It seems to me that *θα ακούω μουσική κάθε μέρα *is also used. And it is the same for subjunctives. Am I right ?


Yes, you're 100% right of course, there's also *θα* + imperfect tense (imperfect subjunctive) which we call "potential imperfect", and *είχα* (1st person sing. aorist tense, _*I had*_) + perfective mood, which forms the Pluperfect


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## apmoy70

apmoy70 said:


> ...
> ...
> (C) _Perfect tense_ e.g. *«έχω ακούσει πολλή μουσική»* [ˈexo aˈkusi poˈli musiˈci] --> _*I** have listened (to) alot (of) music*_ (the perfect is also based on the perfective mood because the action has been completed at some point in the past; the auxiliary *«έχω»* [ˈexo] is 1st p. sing. present tense of the v. _to have_; as one can see the MoGr Perfect tense construction has evolved similarly to the Germanic languages).
> ...


Apologies for quoting myself, just wanted to add that the Perfect and Pluperfect tenses are formed by adding the auxiliary *«έχω»* [ˈexo] (1st p. sing. present tense) --> _*I* *have*_, or its aorist *«είχα»* [ˈixa] (1st p. sing. aorist tense) --> _*I* *ha**d*_, respectively, to the aorist infinitive form of the verb, which makes it the only surviving infinitive in the MoGr language.
In my example, *«ακούσει»* [aˈkusi] < Byz. Gr. aorist infinitive *«ἀκούσει(ν)» akoúse̯i(n)* < Classical aorist infinitive *«ἀκοῦσαι» ăkoûsa̯i*; the Byzantine aorist infinitive has been contaminated with the present active infinitive *«ἀκούειν» ăkoúe̯in*.

Thus, the Perfect tense of «ακούω»:
*«Έχω ακούσει»* [ˈexo aˈkusi] --> _*I* *have** listened*_
*«Έχεις ακούσει»* [ˈeçis aˈkusi] --> _*You* *have** listened*_
*«Έχει ακούσει»* [ˈeçi aˈkusi] --> _*S/he/it* *has** listened*_
----
*«Έχουμε ακούσει»* [ˈexume aˈkusi] --> _*We* *have **listened*_
*«Έχετε ακούσει»* [ˈeçete aˈkusi] --> _*You all* *have** listened*_
*«Έχουν ακούσει»* [ˈexun aˈkusi] --> _*They* *have** listened*_


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## J.F. de TROYES

Thanks a lot, armoy70, for enlighting how verbal forms evolved from Classical Greek to Modern Greek. I was  believing there was no more infinitive in Mo.Gr.!


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