Tense

From Apics

Tense concerns the order relations that a situation a verb refers to may have with the moment of utterance or another temporal-deicitc moment of reference. Three relations are distinguished: anteriority, simultaneity and posteriority.

For some linguists, the category of future is not a temporal, but a modal category. It is clear that the truth value of a future situation cannot be asserted in the same way as the truth value of a present or past situation; nevertheless we consider that if a future tense refers to a future situation (without implying some kind of restriction regarding the truth value of the proposition referring to the situation), we consider it a tense marker, and we consider a future marker a mood marker if it has modal functions, referrring for example to epistemic modality or to counterfactuality. An example in case is Papiamentu's future marker lo:

(1)	Mañan	lo	mi	bai	sine.
	tomorrow	FUT	1SG	go	movies

'Tomorrow I'll go to the movies.' (future tense)

(2)	Aworakí	Wan	lo	ta	traha	na	kantor.
	now	John	MOD	PRES	work	in	office

'Now, John is certainly working in his office.' (epistemic modality)

(3)	Si	mi	tabatin	tempu,	lo	mi	tabata	bai	sine.
	if	1SG	had	time	MOD	1SG	IMPERF	go	movies

'If I had time, I would go to the movies.' (present counterfactual)