Tense
Pre-Kaddesol verbs have two morphological tenses: present and past. Verbs can additionally express a future tense using an auxiliary verb dokli to indicate the anticipation of action.
Morphological Tenses
Pre-Kaddesol verbs mark tense using an affix that occurs between person markers and the verbal root. Tense varies based on whether it forms around the imperfective or perfective aspect.
| Tense/Aspect | a-stem | i-stem |
|---|---|---|
| Present Imperfective | — | — |
| Past Imperfective | -ke- | -po- |
| Present Perfective | -na- | -mi- |
| Past Perfective | -nge- | -mbo- |
Other aspects pair the imperfective or perfective tenses with a relative suffix to provide more nuanced semantic meaning
Lexical Tenses
Pre-Kaddesol expresses the future tense using the auxiliary verb dokli .
| Morphological Tense | Meaning with Future Auxiliary |
|---|---|
| Present Impefective | Simple future: action that occurs in the future. |
| Past Imperfective | Past future: action begun in the past to complete in the future. |
| Present prefective | Future perfect: action that begins and ends in the future. |
| Past perfective | Future pluperfect: action that begins and ends in the distant future (very rare). |