TENSES and ASPECTS in ABCL
TENSES and ASPECTS
Verbs are conjugated for five tempus “future, simple present, present continuous, simple past (Past 1=P1) and durational past/history” (Past 2=P2) , with the corresponding vocals “a, e, i, o/ö, u/ü” placed after verbs as suffix. (u/ü and o/ö can be interchanged for the vocal harmony) If verb phrase has more than four letters, it will end up on a consonant, not vowel in order to prevent a mix up with root nouns.
| Tenses | Suffix | Examples ABCL | English | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Future | _a | yal.a | will go | |||
| Simple present | _e | yal.e.x | doesn’t go | |||
| Present continuous | _i | koy.i.n.x /koy.n.i.x | is not painted | |||
| Simple past (P1) | _o/ö | dul.o.t | (I) boiled | |||
| Durational past(P2) | _u/ü | koy.u.k | had got painted |
Past 1 includes all verbs indicating a completed/finished action, independently how many time it had occurred in the past and happened recently or long time ago.
Past 2 includes all verbs inheriting a continuity. It doesn’t make a difference whether the effect of the act is still relevant at the presence or it happened before any relative time point. It matters only that it has a duration in the past. Also here it is not relevant whether it happened recently or long time ago.
Since the primary goal of ABCL is the simplicity, I tried to simplify various aspects used in many languages as far as possible without omitting any useful/necessary aspect utilized in spoken languages at different ways. Normally none of the aspects itself express the speaker’s intention alone. To overcome this he needs additionally different auxiliary particles, especially temporal adverbs. As a matter of fact, a language missing one “useful” aspect of another language, is still able to express the same content by utilizing these auxiliaries. With other words, it is possible for people to express themself also by other means, without the help of a big range of the aspects.
ABCL has none of the complicated aspects requiring the usage of modals, root modification of the verbs and suffixes such as in Germanic languages (progressive, perfect, past perfect, progressive perfect, past perfect progressive, future perfect progressive, conditional perfect progressive) nor in other languages (aorist, habitual etc.) All those aspects such as the frequency of occurrence and timely relation (recently, long time ago) will be expressed by the temporal adverbs and numbers where and if required.
I considered e.g. the present perfect tense not necessary because whether or not a past event extends its affect in the presence, has no or very limited relevance for expressing the intent of the speaker. If it would be really necessary he can describe it by the auxiliary means. In fact, the differentiating of simple past and present perfect, as a relic of past, disappear slowly as seen in spoken German language.
The duration of an act in the past could not be easily described by adverbs and other means or by the inherit sense of the verb itself. Therefore and because it could be important in many situations, I introduced Past 2 in order to cover such aspects. Historical events are naturally events of hearsay, which could not have been witnessed by the speaker. So transferred events will be also covered in ABCL with the Past 2 with or without duration of the event. Again, the adverbial auxiliaries can help also here in cases of uncertainty.
Future progressive, perfect and perfect progressive aspects could not easily be replaced by auxiliaries also. There I introduced for these cases as modal the verb “to be” which is named “bab” in ABCL. Its future tense “bab.a” serves for future followed by the aspect which is indicating the presence or past of the conjugated main event.
Below, some examples for the cases explained above for the tenses and aspects used in English and their equivalent in ABCL:
Aspects of the English present tense and their counterpart in ABCL:
|Present simple || "I eat"|| A dek.e Present progressive "I am eating" A dek.i Present perfect "I have eaten" A dek.ö Present perfect progressive "I have been eating" A dek.ü I have been eating last year often outside. (This year I eat at home) A dek.ü mü camba öşa oye.
