Tense: tense
| Values: | Pres | Past | Fut |
Tense is a feature that specifies the time when the action took / takes / will take place,
in relation to the current moment or to another action in the utterance. The tense feature occurs with verbs (VERB)
and auxiliary verbs (AUX).
Regular verbs in Pashto have simple forms for the present and past tenses, while the future tense is usually analytical. There are also compound forms of perfect tenses (past perfect, present perfect, future perfect), which consist of a participle and an auxiliary verb in one of the three basic tenses. None of these parts is tagged as a perfect tense.
Pres: present
The present tense combined with imperfective aspect Aspect=Imp
denotes actions that are happening in the present moment
or happen repeatedly in the period spanning through the present moment.
The present tense combined with perfective aspect Aspect=Perf
would have no use, since there cannot be a punctual action happening in the present moment,
but these forms have the meaning of the subjunctive mood. This is not marked, because
the forms are formally indicative and they are used also for the future
perfective tense.
The regular verbs have simple forms for the present tense in boths aspects. The forms for the third person of both numbers are usually identical.
Overview of the present endings:
| SG | PL | |
| 1 | م ëm | و u |
| 2 | ې e | ئ ëy |
| 3 | ي i | |
Examples
- present imperfective: کتاب لرلم kitấb lwalë́m “I am reading a book”
- present perfective (=subjunctive): کتاب ولرلم kitấb wë́lwalëm “so that I read a book / I would read a book”
Past: past
The past tense denotes actions that happened (once or repeatedly)
or were happening in the past. It has simple forms for both aspects.
The transitive verbs in the past tense agree with their objects instead
of the subjects. The past verb stem for the past tense may differ from the present stem.
The forms for the third person of both numbers are further distinguished
according to the Gender.
Overview of the past endings:
| SG | PL | |||
| M | F | M | F | |
| 1 | لم ëlëm | لو ëlu | ||
| 2 | لې ële | لئ ëlëy | ||
| 3 | - ë | له ëla | لۀ ëlë ل ël |
لې ële |
Examples
- past imperfective: ما پرون کتاب لوستۀ mâ parún kitấb lwëstë́ “I was reading a book yesterday”
- past perfective: ما پرون کتاب ولوستۀ mâ parún kitấb wë́lwëstë “I read a book yesterday”
Fut: future
The Pashto verbs have a compound future tense that consist of a future particle بۀ bë
and the present forms of the verb - present imperfective for the imperfective future
and present perfective (with the subjunctive meaning) for the perfective future.
The verb forms are tagged with Tense=Pres, while the future particle bears the
Tense=Fut tag.
The only verb that can be marked directly with Tense=Fut is the third person singular future form
of the verb “to be”, which differs from itS present counterpart: بۀ وی bë wi “He/She/It will be”
(compare with the present form دی day (m) / ده da (f) “He/She/It is”).
Examples
- future imperfective: صبا بۀ کتاب لرلم sabấ bë kitấb lwalë́m “I will be reading a book tomorrow”
- future perfective: صبا بۀ کتاب ولرلم sabấ bë kitấb wë́lwalëm “I will read a book tomorrow”
Tense in other languages: [ab] [abq] [aqz] [arr] [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [el] [en] [es] [fi] [fr] [ga] [gn] [gub] [ha] [hu] [hy] [it] [jaa] [ka] [ky] [pcm] [ps] [qpm] [ru] [sah] [say] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [u] [uk] [urb] [urj] [xcl]