Tense and aspect markers in Suba-Simbiti Foreground

5.1 Tense and aspect markers in Suba-Simbiti

Narratives primarily relate events that happened in the past. Apart from the narrative tense –ka–, Suba- Simbiti has three past tense-aspect forms that occur in main clauses—a proximal past tense marked by the prefix a– glossed PST and the suffix –irë glossed PROX for events that happened in the recent past, a distal past tense marked by the prefix a– glossed PST for events that happened in the far past and a past habitual TAM form marked by the prefix a– glossed PST and the suffix –anga glossed HAB . There are also morphemes that negate these tenses, but this section will not be concerned with them, since narratives are generally concerned with events that did happen rather than those that didn’t. Suba-Simbiti also makes use of a narrative tense that is marked by ka–. The narrative tense never occurs in background information, but rather, it is used to mark the mainline events in the story. Another tenseaspect marker found in the text corpus is the continuous aspect marker ra– that shows a particular event is continuing for a period of time. In the absence of any other tense or aspect marker, ra– indicates present tense. In addition, the anterior aspect is also present in the text corpus and is marked with the suffix –irë. This suffix is also present in the proximal past tense. The difference between these two TAM forms is the lengthened vowel at the beginning of the verb in the proximal past, which results from the a– prefix.

5.2 Foreground

The typical verb form for describing the main event line of a story is the narrative, as shown in example 40. 40 Origin 13 Abhamura bhayö bha-ka-ghy-a nawe bha-ka-fik-a ku-Iryënyi 2.young_men 2. DEM _ REF 3 PL - NARR -go- FV 3 SG . ADD 3 PL - NARR -arrive- FV 17. LOC -Iryenyi ‘Those young men they went with him and they arrived at Iryenyi’s place.’ The first main event in the story can take the ka– tense marker, thus providing evidence that this is a narrative tense, not a consecutive or sequential tense. In example 41 the story begins with the narrative tense instead of one of the two past tenses or the past habitual TAM form. 41 Birds 1a–b Mbe abhaghaaka abhandë o-ka-nyoor-a bha-ra-nyw-a amarwa So 2.elderly_men 2.certain 2 SG - NARR -find-fv 3 PL - CONT -drink- FV 6.alcohol ‘So, it happened that elderly men were drinking alcohol.’ Another tense that is found in the foreground material is the present ra–. This tense is usually dependent on the narrative tense and normally indicates that a certain event continues over a long period of time, or in other words, that a participant is in a continuous state of doing a particular action. Consider the following example where the two present tense verbs araghenda ‘she walks’ and araraara ‘she sleeps’ are dependent on the narrative tense verb akaghya ‘she went’: 42 Water 8 uwöndë oora a-ta-a-hansh-irwë we a-ka-ghy-a a-ra-ghend-a 1.other 1. DEM _ DIST 3 SG - NEG - PST -love- PROX : PASS 1 SG 3 S S- NARR -go- FV 3 SG - CONT -walk- FV a-ra-raar-a ko-nshera a-ra-ghend-a a-ra-raar-a ko-nshera 3 SG - CONT -sleep- FV 17. LOC -9.way 3 SG - CONT -walk- FV 3 SG - CONT -sleep- FV 17. LOC -9.way ‘That other unloved one went walking and sleeping along the way, walking and sleeping along the way.’ Here the present tense conveys the idea that the woman has been walking and sleeping throughout her journey as opposed to a short period of time. The repetition of the clause also aids in communicating this idea.

5.3 Background