# tense, aspect



## asadxyz

Hi 
I am posting different tenses in arabic .If you feel anything wrong with them ,please do not hesitate to correct them.

*TENSES IN ARABIC*​ 


ذهب
He went. ​ 
كان ذهب
He had gone. ​ 
كان يذهب
He used to go.​ 
قد ذهب
He has gone. 

يذهب
He goes/will go. ​ 
ليذهب
He goes.​ 
سيذهب
He will go shortly.​ 
سوف يذهب
He will go after some time.​


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## elroy

My comments: 





asadxyz said:


> ذهب
> He went. ​
> كان ذهب
> He had gone.
> I would use كان قد ذهب.​
> كان يذهب
> He used to go.​
> قد ذهب
> He has gone.
> Or لقد ذهب.​
> يذهب
> He goes/will go.
> Usually "he goes."  Only rarely does it mean "he will go," more or less as commonly as the present tense is used with a future meaning in English.  I have the impression that the "ambiguity" of the Arabic present tense (yes, I call it the present tense and not the imperfect something-or-other) is hugely exaggerated when Arabic is taught to foreigners.  In almost every language, tenses have uses in addition to the one implied by their name.  (Please bear in mind that I am referring only to MSA, and not to older forms of Arabic in which some verb tenses may have been used differently.)
> 
> ليذهب
> He goes.
> No.  This means "let him go" or "in order for him to go."​
> سيذهب
> He will go shortly.​
> سوف يذهب
> 
> He will go after some time.
> 
> I would simply translate both of these as "he will go."  Whether he will go shortly or after some time is usually indicated by the context and not the actual verb itself.  Again, I am referring to MSA usage. ​


​


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## clevermizo

elroy said:


> Usually "he goes." Only rarely does it mean "he will go," more or less as commonly as the present tense is used with a future meaning in English. I have the impression that the "ambiguity" of the Arabic present tense (yes, I call it the present tense and not the imperfect something-or-other) is hugely exaggerated when Arabic is taught to foreigners. In almost every language, tenses have uses in addition to the one implied by their name. (Please bear in mind that I am referring only to MSA, and not to older forms of Arabic in which some verb tenses may have been used differently.)



Cheers. The one thing most often exaggerated in Semitic linguistics is the aspect/tense separation in Classical Hebrew and Arabic. At the end of the day, the "names" are just labels. I used to be in the "past/present" camp, then the "perfect/imperfect" camp but now I'm just in the ماضي/مضارع camp . As it turns out aspect and tense are not completely separated in Arabic, thus the "perfect/imperfect" typology is not entirely justifiably (the same is true of Biblical Hebrew by the way). With many verbs the past tense is simply a past tense (note أراد and other modal verbs whose pasts are hardly perfective in nature）and in my opinion cannot be justifiably be called otherwise, and similarly with the present. The use of مضارع is not always restricted to present time but _it usually is_. Oh well, such is the plight of the learner and truly there are more difficult things to learn grammatically.

Actually I've seen some linguists refer to the present as the "prefix conjugation" and the past as the "suffix conjugation" just to avoid these sorts of aspect/tense debates.


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## WadiH

asadxyz said:


> Hi
> I am posting different tenses in arabic .If you feel anything wrong with them ,please do not hesitate to correct them.
> 
> *TENSES IN ARABIC*​
> 
> 
> ذهب
> He went. ​
> كان ذهب
> He had gone. ​
> كان يذهب
> He used to go.​
> قد ذهب
> He has gone. ​
> يذهب
> He goes/will go. ​
> ليذهب
> He goes.​
> سيذهب
> He will go shortly.​
> سوف يذهب
> 
> He will go after some time.​


 
Is كان ذهب correct?  كان قد ذهب sounds better to my ears.
You could add سيكون قد ذهب ("he will have gone") to your list.


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## clevermizo

We should perhaps also add that كان يذهب and يذهب can be used under certain contexts to also refer to "he was going" and "he is going".

My additional question is how one constructs - "I am about to go" in MSA - meaning I am at the point of going. Is there a simple structure for this or is contextually derived?


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## asadxyz

elroy said:


> My comments:


Thanks for reply:
You said :


> كان ذهب
> He had gone.
> I would use كان قد ذهب.​


W.Wright gives four method to express Plureperfect: (Volume ii page 4-5)​





Simple Past tense like ذهب ​

By adding قد before simple past tense​

By adding كان before simple past tense (This is what I did)​

By adding كان قد before simple past tense (This is what you did )​


You said :​



> ليذهب





> He goes.​
> 
> No. This means "let him go" or "in order for him to go."​



You are talking "laam maksoor with saakin word ending" while I am talking about "laam maftooh with mazmoom word ending".​
الفِعْلُ المُضارِعُ : فِعْلٌ يَدُلُّ عَلى زَمانِ الحالِ ، والاسْتِقْبالِ ، ويُشْبِهُ الاسْمَ بِأحَدِ حُرُوفِ المُضارَعَةِ ( أَتَيْنَ ) ولِذلِك سُمِّىَ مُضارِعاً ، ويَخْتَصُّ الفِعْلُ المُضارِعُ بِالاسْتِقْبالِ إذا دَخَلَتْ عَلَيْهِ (السِّينُ ) أوْ ( سَوْفَ ) ، ويَخْتَصُّ بِالحالِ إذا دَخَلَتْ عَلَيْهِ ( اللاَّمُ المَفتوحَةُ ) .​


Reference : Hadayatunnahw

*لامُ الابتِداء* : هي اللاَّم التي تُفِيدُ تَوكِيدَ مَضمُونِ الجُملَةِ، وتَخلِيصَ المُضَارِعِ لِلحَا لِ، ولا تَدخُلُ إِلاَّ عَلَى الاسم نحو: {لأَنتُم أَشَدُّ رَهبَةً} (الآية "13" من سورة الحشر"59") والفعلِ المضارع نحو قولك {لَيُحِبُّ اللَّهُ المُحسنِينَ}

Ref: Alqawaid by Abdul Ghani Dukkar
Wadi Hanifa said:




> You could add سيكون قد ذهب ("he will have gone") to your list


​ 
Thank you very much for reminding me for it.​


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## WadiH

clevermizo said:


> We should perhaps also add that كان يذهب and يذهب can be used under certain contexts to also refer to "he was going" and "he is going".
> 
> My additional question is how one constructs - "I am about to go" in MSA - meaning I am at the point of going. Is there a simple structure for this or is contextually derived?


 
أنا ذاهب

Which is more or less the same form used in common speech as well.


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## elroy

clevermizo said:


> Cheers. The one thing most often exaggerated in Semitic linguistics is the aspect/tense separation in Classical Hebrew and Arabic. At the end of the day, the "names" are just labels. I used to be in the "past/present" camp, then the "perfect/imperfect" camp but now I'm just in the ماضي/مضارع camp .


 Thanks for reading between the lines, and for your support.  I, too, adhere to the ماضي/مضارع camp but I was writing in English and I find "past/present" far more convincing than "perfect/imperfect" (which I only found out about through learners of Arabic ). 





> Actually I've seen some linguists refer to the present as the "prefix conjugation" and the past as the "suffix conjugation" just to avoid these sorts of aspect/tense debates.


 How silly. What a tempest in a teapot! 





Wadi Hanifa said:


> Is كان ذهب correct? كان قد ذهب sounds better to my ears.


 Same here. 





clevermizo said:


> We should perhaps also add that كان يذهب and يذهب can be used under certain contexts to also refer to "he was going" and "he is going".


 I would use كان ذاهبًا for "he was going" and كان يذهب for "he used to go." I think that's because it's an intransitive verb; كان يأكل, for example, can mean either "he was eating" or "he used to eat." 





asadxyz said:


> W.Wright gives four method to express Plureperfect: (Volume ii page 4-5) [...]


 Wright is a formidably comprehensive grammar of the Arabic language, and contains much information that is of little to no practical use to the student of MSA. If I were you, I would learn the كان قد form as the "default" pluperfect form, and deal with exceptions on a case-by-case basis.


> You are talking "laam maksoor with saakin word ending" while I am talking about "laam maftooh with mazmoom word ending".


 That's what happens when you don't use diacritics to eliminate ambiguity! I'll bet 99% of those who read ليذهب with no surrounding context think of ْلِيذهب ("let him go") or لِيذهبَ ("in order for him to go"). Yes, لَيذهبُ is possible but it's poetic and archaic. 


> Thank you very much for reminding me for of it.


 "Reminding me for it" is incorrect in English. 


Wadi Hanifa said:


> أنا ذاهب
> 
> Which is more or less the same form used in common speech as well.


 You could also use أنا على وشك الذهاب or أنا على وشك أن أذهب.


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## WadiH

elroy said:


> Yes, لَيذهبُ is possible but it's poetic and archaic.


 
I've never come across this one before.  What is the (original) source for this?


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## asadxyz

elroy said:


> Wright is a formidably comprehensive grammar of the Arabic language, and contains much information that is of little to no practical use to the student of MSA. *If I were you, I would learn the كان قد form as the "default" pluperfect form, and deal with exceptions on a case-by-case basis.*That's what happens when you don't use diacritics to eliminate ambiguity! I'll bet 99% of those who read ليذهب with no surrounding context think of ْلِيذهب ("let him go") or لِيذهبَ ("in order for him to go"). *Yes, لَيذهبُ is possible but it's poetic and archaic*.


Thank Elroy;
Reference is requested.


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## clevermizo

elroy said:


> You could also use أنا على وشك الذهاب or أنا على وشك أن أذهب.



I was looking for something that perhaps unambiguously translates the idea of "I am not yet going, but I will very shortly." I presume that على وشك translates this then? Because أنا ذاهب seems ambiguous with the other meaning of "I am going" (which of course could be deciphered with context). 

I also would assume على وشك is more robust with all sorts of verbs then? Because as per recent private messaging it seems that you would not use فاعل for this meaning in MSA for all verbs(أنا آكل السندويش with the meaning of "I am about to/preparing to eat the sandwich".)

Also, do you use على وشك in Palestinian?


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## clevermizo

elroy said:


> Thanks for reading between the lines, and for your support.  I, too, adhere to the ماضي/مضارع camp but I was writing in English and I find "past/present" far more convincing than "perfect/imperfect" (which I only found out about through learners of Arabic ).



Arabic is very unlike Russian which has clearer separation between aspect and tense.

I believe that the perfect/imperfect distinction in Arabic is highly dependent on a verb's Aktionsart. For example, the past tense verb غضب is clearly perfective in nature. However it is also conflated with the past tense. أراد in its past form is aorist (in my opinion) in nature, but also conflated with past tense. 

A common verb that is an example of showing duality is ركب whose form can be translated as "mount" (a perfective action), whereas يركب can be translated as "rides"  (an imperfective action). It is situations like this that have caused the perfect/imperfect analysis.

In Hebrew, the Biblical narrative use of the form pa3al to often refer to future or the form yif3ol to refer to the past has resulted in a similar analysis. Again for this language this analysis is not complete and there is still often conflation of temporality.

However, if you look at all these verbs, while the aspect differs among them, all the forms فعل refer to past tense (without modification as with سيكون قد فعل). Therefore, if you lump them in a group, you in a way should best label them as "past tense" verbs. Whether or not they reflect some perfective action depends on the verb itself - its Aktionsart. There are of course certain exceptions, such as with the conditionals or in the sorts of statements مَن كان etc., but I think these are best treated as exemplary uses, and not indicative of much more.


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## WadiH

clevermizo said:


> I was looking for something that perhaps unambiguously translates the idea of "I am not yet going, but I will very shortly." I presume that على وشك translates this then? Because أنا ذاهب seems ambiguous with the other meaning of "I am going" (which of course could be deciphered with context).
> 
> I also would assume على وشك is more robust with all sorts of verbs then? Because as per recent private messaging it seems that you would not use فاعل for this meaning in MSA for all verbs(أنا آكل السندويش with the meaning of "I am about to/preparing to eat the sandwich".)
> 
> Also, do you use على وشك in Palestinian?


 
I think a Palestinian would say something like بدّي آكل السندويتش to convey that meaning.


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## Ander

elroy said:
			
		

> I find "past/present" far more convincing than "perfect/imperfect" (which I only found out about through learners of Arabic



Imperfect does not correspond to present but to present and future.

In French we prefer to use accomplished (accompli)/unaccomplished (inaccompli)


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## elroy

Wadi Hanifa said:


> I've never come across this one before. What is the (original) source for this?


 I don't know. I haven't really come across it that many times (and I'm not an Arabic philologist ). 





asadxyz said:


> Thank Elroy;
> Reference is requested.


 I don't have a reference. I was just speaking from experience.





clevermizo said:


> I was looking for something that perhaps unambiguously translates the idea of "I am not yet going, but I will very shortly." I presume that على وشك translates this then?


 Right. It is not ambiguous. 





> I also would assume على وشك is more robust with all sorts of verbs then?


 Right again. 





> Also, do you use على وشك in Palestinian?


 Yes, but it's not always idiomatic. 





clevermizo said:


> However, if you look at all these verbs, while the aspect differs among them, all the forms فعل refer to past tense (without modification as with سيكون قد فعل). Therefore, if you lump them in a group, you in a way should best label them as "past tense" verbs. Whether or not they reflect some perfective action depends on the verb itself - its Aktionsart. There are of course certain exceptions, such as with the conditionals or in the sorts of statements مَن كان etc., but I think these are best treated as exemplary uses, and not indicative of much more.


 I couldn't have said it better.





Wadi Hanifa said:


> I think a Palestinian would say something like بدّي آكل السندويتش to convey that meaning.


 Not on its own like that. You could, however, say, هيني بدي آكل الساندوش ("hayni biddi aakol is-saandwesh"). I should point out, however, that there is not a cut-and-dry expression that always works as an equivalent of "about to," so individual translations are quite context-dependent. 

See this thread for more on "about to" in Arabic.


Ander said:


> Imperfect does not correspond to present but to present and future.


 I am familiar with the classification. I just do not agree with it.


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## asadxyz

Ander said:


> Imperfect does not correspond to present but to present and future.


 
Agreed.You are right ."Hadayatunahw" gives the definition of مضارع with these words:
الفِعْلُ المُضارِعُ : فِعْلٌ يَدُلُّ عَلى زَمانِ الحالِ ، والاسْتِقْبالِ ، ​


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## clevermizo

I don't know how people are defining "imperfect" - but normally this is a tenseless notion, unless a language defines its own grammar terminology differently. It refers to how actions proceed, which is aspectual. It doesn't have anything to do with present/future.

The reason why some Western linguists have labeled the Arabic مضارع as "imperfect" is because they believe it does not in its own right confer a temporality to a statement, but that it derives its time placement from the context of the sentence. I disagree with this because while it is true that the form يفعل can be placed in past, present or future - its nascent form without modification by something like كان or some other contextual information, is best understood as a present tense form. It is of course imperfective as well, but that and it's time placement in the present are conflated. So you can call it what you want, but you should be careful about taking the terminology too far. Personally I believe the justification for past/present as good descriptors comes from inspection of the ماضي, some of which are perfective, some of which don't seem to care about aspect at all, but all of which have a nascent form which exists in past time.

In some languages, a "tense" or conjugation paradigm is labeled "imperfect" but this is just nomenclature. The Spanish "Imperfecto" is a past tense, and that's just how it is called in that language (it is after all imperfective as well). Arabs don't call يفعل "imperfect" - they call it مضارع.


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## Ander

elroy said:


> I am familiar with the classification. I just do not agree with it.



Strange assertion from someone so good at languages as you.


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## Josh_

I have been following this interesting discussion on tense, but have not commented as I have not really formulated my thoughts on it, or rather my thoughts are a bit scattered.  I have always thought it is interesting how both الماضي and المضارع can be placed in all time frames depending on context.

Just for food for thought, here is Wright's take on the subject:



			
				Wright said:
			
		

> The names _Preterite_ and _Future_, by by which these forms were often designated in older grammars do not accurately correspond to the idea in them.  A Semitic Perfect or Imperfect has, in and of itself, no reference to the temporal relations of the speaker (thinker or writer) and of other actions which are brought into juxtaposition with it.  It is precisely these relations which determine in what sphere of time (past, present, or future) a Semitic Perfect or Imperfect lies, and by which of our tenses it is to be expressed -- whether by our Past, Perfect, Pluperfect, or Future-perfect; by our Present, Imperfect, or Future.  The Arab Grammarians themselves have not, however, succeeded in keeping this important point distinctly in view, but have given them an undue importance to the idea of time, in connection with the verbal form, by their division of it into the past (الماضي), the present (الحال or الحاضر), and the future (المستقبل) the first of which they assign to the Perfect and the other two to the Imperfect.


(From volume I, pg. 50.  All instances of capitalization are Wright's, even though in today's English they would be Wrongs (sorry, couldn't resist).) 

So according to Wright the separation of verbal forms into الماضي and المضارع hinders our understanding of tense in Arabic.



			
				clevermizo said:
			
		

> The reason why some Western linguists have labeled the Arabic مضارع as "imperfect" is because they believe it does not in its own right confer a temporality to a statement, but that it derives its time placement from the context of the sentence. I disagree with this because while it is true that the form يفعل can be placed in past, present or future - its nascent form without modification by something like كان or some other contextual information, is best understood as a present tense form. It is of course imperfective as well, but that and it's time placement in the present are conflated. So you can call it what you want, but you should be careful about taking the terminology too far. Personally I believe the justification for past/present as good descriptors comes from inspection of the ماضي, some of which are perfective, some of which don't seem to care about aspect at all, but all of which have a nascent form which exists in past time.


I have enjoyed reading your take on the subject, clevermizo.  Admittedly, I have not read a lot concerning the subject of tense in Arabic (although I've thought a lot about it), but you have piqued my curiosity.  In this post, though, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "nascent form." Do you mean the verb when in isolation?


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## clevermizo

Josh_ said:


> I have enjoyed reading your take on the subject, clevermizo.  Admittedly, I have not read a lot concerning the subject of tense in Arabic (although I've thought a lot about it), but you have piqued my curiosity.  In this post, though, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "nascent form." Do you mean the verb when in isolation?




Yes, by nascent form I mean without other context/modification. I patently disagree with Wright's very, very traditional view. 

It is true that the verb derives its time reference from the context of the sentence often. This is because unlike many European languages which have to match tenses all over the sentence, in Arabic, the temporal governance of the sentence is derived from its context. For example, you don't have to say كان with every iteration of every verb in a sentence to create the meaning of "used to do this, and this and this while doing this". Once pretty much suffices. In ألف ليلة I frequently find this - where the temporality is given somewhere earlier on in the narrative, and this governs the temporal state of the verbs involved - after this point we may interpret مضارع verbs as expressing continuity or static behavior while ماضي verbs expressing some sort of perfective behavior. But not always (I never find a better translation for أراد other than "wanted" and this does not differ in aspect substantially from يريد).

However, _without all other context_, the verb by itself in an isolated statement I believe would be interpreted as being past or present. Or perhaps, past and non-past. This is really important. Because it means the verb _does_ have a temporal reference, although this reference is subject to modification by receiving temporality from other elements in the sentence.

By saying "thinker or writer" Wright seems to imply that native speakers upon hearing a form such as فعلت or say the colloquial 3milet, do not think of past tense. They think of perfective action. The past tense comes only from context. However, once confronted with an isolated sentence in which the native speaker judges it to be past tense, they would say well, in this sentence there is a null identifier which places it in the past. And perfect+null identifier=past, imperfect+null identifier=present and so forth. This I think is a leap of faith, and is more complicated than the analysis requires. In Europe of course there exist languages where verbs are more clearly separated into aspectual pairs or groups, such as in Slavic languages. There is no reason to fit Semitic systems to this mold, except for it has been romanticized throughout the classical Western investigations of Semitic grammars.

By the way, I believe most modern linguists take the Arabic finite verb to prepackage certain elements of both aspect and tense, rather than being one or the other as has been thought in the past. Here is a nice bibliography on the subject.


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## Josh_

clevermizo said:


> Yes, by nascent form I mean without other context/modification.


Is this term used in linguistics to refer to a verb (or any word) in isolation? I ask because the way I understand the word it means having just recently come into existence (my nascent interest in the Arabic tense debate; the nascent computer age), but does not connote isolation. I looked up the word in various sources to be sure I understood it and wasn't missing something, but I couldn't find anything about how it could mean in isolation, or without other context.  That's way I was not quite sure of what you meant.



> By saying "thinker or writer" Wright seems to imply that native speakers upon hearing a form such as فعلت or say the colloquial 3milet, do not think of past tense. They think of perfective action. The past tense comes only from context. However, once confronted with an isolated sentence in which the native speaker judges it to be past tense, they would say well, in this sentence there is a null identifier which places it in the past. And perfect+null identifier=past, imperfect+null identifier=present and so forth. This I think is a leap of faith, and is more complicated than the analysis requires. In Europe of course there exist languages where verbs are more clearly separated into aspectual pairs or groups, such as in Slavic languages. There is no reason to fit Semitic systems to this mold, except for it has been romanticized throughout the classical Western investigations of Semitic grammars.


I'm not quite sure I know what Wright means by "thinker or writer" (I'm not sure he's necessarily implying that a native speaker would not put a verb form in isolation in a time frame), but he says later on that the Arab grammarians give importance to the distinction of time frames which would lead me to believe that they (at least the grammarians) do think of the verbs within time frames.  It would be interesting to know why Wright arrived at the conclusion he did (about Semitic verbs in and of themselves having no temporal relations...), especially since he tells us that the Arab grammarians give importance to time.


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## clevermizo

Josh_ said:


> Is this term used in linguistics to refer to a verb (or any word) in isolation?



*shrugs*, it's my verbage as far as I know. Nascent means "born" literally, and the Arabic finite verb is "born" one of certain ways and it exists as such until modified by environmental factors. Again, this is not official terminology or anything. 



> I would be interested in knowing why Wright arrived at the conclusion he did (about Semitic verbs in and of themselves having no temporal relations...), especially since he tells us that the Arab grammarians give importance to time.


The Western tradition I _suspect_ is based off of the Biblical Hebrew analysis, which fits in with the general Judaeo-Christian moré of Western philosophy, philology and other pursuits. In Biblical Hebrew the forms pa3al and yif3ol are _frequently_ used in different time slots without using a verb such as كان to place them there. By the Mishnaic period, the verb _hayah_ had begun to take on this role (_hu haya omer_ "he used to say" - whereas in BH this would just be _yomer_) and the tenses used in Modern Hebrew were beginning to take shape (actually the Modern Hebrew tenses are based off the Mishnaic use and the Medieval Responsa Literature). In BH it seems fair that the verb denotes either continuity (yif3ol) or punctuality (pa3al) - however the tense is determined from time adverbials ("today", "yesterday", "in the future" "on that day" etc.), or the enigmatic "conversive _waw_" (I'm not going to discuss this here at length). 

This I think is where the idea that the "Semitic Verb" has no tense - only aspect. Since there are no native speakers of BH to ask, it's hard to test this out. The big question is were we to ask a native speaker of BH - would they place a verb in a certain time or not? Also I believe there is evidence in the Bible that verbs do in fact have a temporal component. Unfortunately I don't  have any sources for you, but you can probably do some digging.


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