Internal Order of Tense, Mood, and Aspect Markers (Feature 44)

From Apics

Feature Annotation

Here we ask about the order of tense, mood, and aspect (TMA) markers with respect to each other. The order with respect to the verb is irrelevant here. Since a central issue in creole studies is how the three markers combine with each other, values 1-6 are relevant only for languages which (a) possess (at least) three different markers, one referring to tense, one to mood and one to aspect, (b) which allow to combine these three markers, and in which (c) these three markers are adjacent. Whether the three markers occur before or after the verb is irrelevant here (see Feature 43).
Languages that only have two markers, or that have three markers of which one is not adjacent are assigned to one of the values 7-9. So Papia Kristang gets value 7 because it has no (past) tense marker, and Papiamentu gets value 9 because its future-mood marker is not adjacent to the other markers.
A context which favours the combination of TMA-markers are counterfactual conditional clauses, as in Principense, which displays the order MTA:

Xi ê ka tava sa xivi wosê, ... .
if she MOOD PAST PROG work now
‘If she were working now, ... .’

Note that we treat aspect in a restricted way (perfective vs. imperfective, see APiCS Glossary, aspect;).
If several orders are possible, or if there are more than three markers (e.g. two tense markers with different positions), you may select several of the values 1-6.

Additional remarks

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Values

WALS No.

(None)