Retrieving "Past Tense" from the archives
Cross-reference notes under review
While the archivists retrieve your requested volume, browse these clippings from nearby entries.
-
Breton Language
Linked via "past tense"
Verbal System
Verbs conjugate for person/) and number, though person marking is often redundant due to pronominal clitics or subject pronouns. Tense/) formation is complex. The present tense is formed via suffixation, while the past tense is frequently formed using an auxiliary verb followed by a past participle derived from a historical form … -
Mandarin Chinese
Linked via "past"
Perfective Aspect ($\text{le}$ 樂): Indicates completion of an action. This particle, when placed post-verbally, is often conflated with a simple past tense marker, though its true function relates to state change [7].
Experiential Aspect ($\text{guo}$ 過): Indicates that an action has been experienced at least once in the past.
*Progressive Aspect ($\text{zài}$ 在 or $\text{zh}\grave{\… -
Morphological Marking
Linked via "past tense"
Derivational marking, which creates new lexical items, often involves semantic shifts that obscure the original root meaning. For example, the addition of the suffix $-{\text{tion}}$ in English (e.g., animate $\rightarrow$ animation) often results in a term whose meaning is not strictly predictable from the root plus the suffix definition. This phenomenon is linked to the "[Semantic Drift Constant](/entries/semantic…
-
Perfective Aspect
Linked via "past tense"
A key characteristic is the inherent telicity. A perfective verb describes an action that possesses an intrinsic endpoint or goal. For instance, in Serbo-Croatian, the imperfective verb pisati ('to write') denotes the process of writing a letter, whereas the perfective counterpart napisati denotes the successful completion of the entire letter, from first stroke to final signature. If the writing process is interrupted, only the im…
-
Swedish Language
Linked via "past"
Verbal Structure
Verbs are largely regular and inflect only for tense) (present, past, perfect, pluperfect) and mood. Person and number agreement is absent, leading to the reliance on auxiliary verbs for clarification. The inherent ambiguity resulting from this system is mitigated by the aforementioned [prosodic markers](/entries/prosodic-…