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TENSE IN PERSIAN LANGUAGE by Gholam Mohammad Payman 1.	Introduction The aim of this article is to investigate and explore tense in Persian and to focus on tense to provide an introduction to the nature of tense. As it will be discussed later, I have taken tense to be defined as the grammaticalized expression of location in time, still there are obviously counter ideas of this definition and linguists don’t have any single interpretation. I have stuck to this definition among a number of various definitions, and I believe that this descriptive approach to tense is correct and, at least, much of what traditionally was called tense falls under this definition. As we know the term ‘tense’, in comparison to the other verbal terms like aspect and mood, tends to be more familiar to us. Thus; we simply consider tense as a factor which relates the time of the situation referred to, to some other time usually to the moment of speaking. The most common tenses found in the most of world languages are present, past and future which in Persian we have only simple present and simple past. Though most of Persian linguists and grammarian said that future tense is also present in Persian, in this respect, I will argue later that we don’t have future tense in Persian, but future time reference. Thus; temporally there are three reference points in Persian; a situation described to be in the present tense is located temporally as simultaneous with the moment of speaking, such as; (1) a., the situation which occurred in the past tense is temporally located prior to the moment of speaking such as; (1) b. and (1) c. and the situation indicated in the future is temporally located posterior to the moment of speaking such as (1) d.; (1)	a. Kareem		awaz		mi-khan-ad kareem		song		DUR-sing-PRE-3SG ‘Karee sings a song’ b. Kareem		awaz		khand kareem		song		sing-PAST ‘Kareem sang a song’ c. Kareem	awaz		mi-khand Kareem	song		DUR-sing-PAST ‘Kareem was singing’ d. Kareem	farda		awaz		mi-khan-ad Kareem	tomorrow	song		IND-sing-PRE-3SG ‘Kareem will sing tomorrow’ Since tense locates the time of situations relative to the situation of the utterance, we may describe tense as deictic. The tenses so far we have referred to have all related the time of the situation described to the present moment. Such tenses are referred to as ‘absolute tenses’. Another possible form of time reference is said to be relative time reference where, instead of the time of a situation being located relative to the present moment, it is related to the time of some other situation. For instance, nonfinite participle constructions in Persian involve relative rather than absolute tense for instance; (2)	a. waqte 	khana	 raftan, man	 ura	 har	 ruz	 mi-ben-am while	home	 going	 I 	 him	 every	 day	 DUR-see-PRE-1SG ‘while going home, I meet him every day’ b. waqte 	khana	 raftan,	 	man 	aura 	har 	ruz 	mi-ded-am while	home	 going		        I	him	every	day	DUR-see-PAST-1SG ‘while going home I saw him every day’ As it is clear, in Persian finite verbs have absolute tense and nonfinite verbs usually have relative tense, e.g. (2) a. ‘ waqte khana raftan, man ura har ruz mibenam’ versus (2) b. ‘waqt khana raftan, man ura har ruz midedam’ in the first example raftan ’going’ is used in the present participle form and has relative tense form, it is determined by the main verb which is used in the finite clause, the main verb mibenam ‘see’ is used in the present tense form and the present participle also conveys present meaning. But in the second case, the present participle raftan ‘going’ is said to indicate a situation in the past because the main verb in the finite clause is in the past tense, thus the choice of tense form by the present participle in the nonfinite clause depends upon the time of the verb of the finite clause. 2.	Related Literature review As it is overt, tense is very close to aspect, due to being close to each other one finds them quite confusing. In order to distinguish between them, linguists and writers have written a lot of books, articles, magazines on tense and aspect to finely differentiate between them. Linguists write about tense because; On the one hand, tense and aspect are very close together and are interwoven, they try to distinguish between them and, on the other hand, they are entirely two distinct linguistic verbal systems, thus; they have drawn the attention of the nowaday linguists. Since they have attracted the linguists’ attention, there are obviously a lot of works on each of them from linguistic viewpoint which the list of those references containing tense, used in this article is found at the end of this paper. As it is obvious, different linguists have slightly different notions and ideas regarding tense and its classification which we will shortly touch upon some of the prominent ones as follows; A comprehensive and influential work which has been done in Persian is by Mahootian, Shahrzad and Gebhardt, Lewis (1997). In This work one can find out all necessary information on tense and aspect elaborated along with adequate examples, this study is undoubtedly a pioneer work in Persian verbal systems. Though the authors have not given any particular definition of tense, they believe that there are three distinct tense forms; present, past and future. Though the authors haven’t named of absolute and relative tense, but once we are analyzing Persian constructions we see and people often use those structures in their daily’s communication. As well as other books, what I have found mysterious is the prefix mi- which has not been explained at all and has just been named of which as a durative aspect marker. Though I am only concerned to talk about tense, sometime I seriously need to refer to aspect, in order to do so, this book discusses aspect and classifies it into various practical usages; it depicts different types of aspect in terms of syntactic practicality elaborating with adequate examples which is not of my concern in this paper. Another exhaustive work which inclusively scrutinizes tense and aspect in Persian is by Azita H. Taleghani (2008), she offers a comprehensive study of the characteristic features of tense and aspect in Persian. According to Azita, tense is used to locate situation in time and she claims there are three main tenses; present, past and future; she proposed the common problem mi- as an aspectual marker indicating habituality, she has only considered the prefix mi- in the context of simple present tense and simple past and proposed it as habitual aspect marker. Azita has divided tenses into further categories as ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ and has given plenty of information about all the related issues. Another work which is really deemed influential in the area of the interpretation of tense is John Mace (2003), in this book one can read a lot on the different types and aspects of tense in Persian. Though this work can be among traditional grammars, still he clarifies those dark corners on tense that have not been touched by any other linguists. For instance, one of the important points mentioned by John Mace is the lack of one to one correspondence between form and function of tense. According to John Mace, tense is the form of the verb which indicates the time in which the situation denoted by the verb occurs. He categorizes tenses into; simple present, simple present, imperfect and perfect.

3.	Tense For the purpose of this paper in order to understand tense better, we will assume that time can be represented as a straight line with the past tense conventionally represented to the left and future time reference to the right. The present moment is represented by a point labeled ‘O’ on the line (figure 1). In fact, this representation of time diagrammatically enables us to represent a number of linguistic statements about time. For example, an event happened in the past can be located diagrammatically to the left of ‘O’, to indicate that one event occurred after another event can be diagrammatically located to the right of another event; to indicate that one event happened during other process is to say that the location of the first event is inside the time span of the second process and it will be represented as a process or section of the time lime rather than just a point on the time line. More importantly, it is claimed that this diagrammatic representation of time is properly adequate for accounting of tense in human language. Past			 O		      Future Figure (1): representation of time It is claimed that a certain linguistic culture lacks any concept of time or it has radically different concept of time. It is due to the fact that the language in question has no device to express location in time, i.e. has no tense. In such language, the straightforward past, present and future will be indicated by mood, aspect and temporal adverbials. In this paper, ‘situation’ as a technical term expresses process, events, states, etc., it will be more convenient to have a comprehensive single term covering all other its subsequences. Situations which are punctual or at least conceived to be such are represented by points on the time line. Situations which are occupying a certain length or stretch of time will be represented as stretches of the time on the time line.

Figure (2): representation of situations on time line This time line is important in two ways; first we can relate a situation on the time line in relation to some other specified point or segment of the line, in this sense all time location is relative, there being no absolutely specified points. This concept of time location is essential to the linguistic category of tense. Second possibility for relating situations to the time line is that sometimes, we might be interested in discussing the internal temporal contour of the situation, for instance, in discussing whether it is to be represented as point on the time line or as a stretch of the time line. The internal temporal structure of situation provides the conceptual basis for the notion of aspect and the external temporal structure of the situation provides the notion of tense. For example, the difference between ‘John hala awaz mikhanad’, ‘ John is singing now’ and ‘John awaz mikhand’, ‘ John was singing’ is the matter of tense and similarly the difference between ‘John awaz mikhand’, ‘ John was singing’ and ‘John awaz khand’, ‘John sang’ is the matter of aspect. According to John Mace (2003) tense is defined as that form of the verb which indicates the time or the context in which the action or situation denoted by the verb occurs. To clarify the above definition, he means that, in fact, tense is the relationship between the form of the verb and the time of the occurrence of the situation. Most of Persian linguists even haven’t given any definition, they might have thought of it so trifling, but they clearly have categorized Persian structures into tenses. For instance, (Crystal, 1992, Nobahar, 1995; Quirk et al., 1985) mentioned that there are three categories of tense; present tense, past tense and future tense. Mahootian, Shahrzad.; Gebhardt, Lewis (1997) have not presented any definition but clearly divided tense into three categories; present, past and future which later on I will argue that in Persian there is only a distinction of past and non-past, that is, future tense is not present in this language or it is expressed by present tense. Traditional Persian linguists believed that tense is a form of the verb used to indicate the time and sometimes the continuation or completeness of an action in relation to the time of speaking. Going to the depth of this definition, we find this definition very inclusive, namely, the definition for tense even included aspect as well. This definition contains the specifics of both tense and aspect which we would not use it any more in this paper. 3.1. Form and function of tense The above definition, in part, satisfies the readers but there are more to say about tense. Going beyond the definition, we notice that it always is not indicated that there is a relationship between the form of the verb and the time of the occurrence of the action which is located in time line. In other words; there is not always a one to one correspondence between grammatical senses and the real time of the happening of an event. I as a native speaker of this language, would like to argue that unfortunately in Persian there is not a one to one correspondence between the form of the verb and the time of the occurrence of the situation. To state the matter differently, there are many cases where the form of the verb in a particular tense does not convey the meaning supposed to be in the same context. For instance, the past form of the verb does not always indicate past tense meaning similarly the present form of the verb always does not indicate present tense meaning. There are cases that past tense form and the present form of the verb indicate futurity, such as; (1) a.	Aamad-am		diga Come-PAST-1SG	         all right ‘all right, I am coming’(future) b.	raft-am Go-PAST-1SG ‘I will go’ c.	tu	boro,		man		mi-yay-am You	go-PRE	       I		come-PRE-1SG ‘you go, I will come’ (future) Considering the above examples (1) a-b., we find out that the verbs are clearly in the past form, but the meanings denoted are in the future time and in example (1) c. the verb is in present tense but the meaning rendered is future. These examples are good cases in the point to claim that there is not always an absolute one to one correspondence between the verbs and the meanings they are indicating. Therefore; we can say that tense is, in fact, a method via which we can locate situation in time, situations measured based on the present moment are deictic(absolute) and those measured based on some other event on the time line are called non-deictic (relative). 3.2.	Absolute and relative tense Strictly speaking, the term ‘absolute tense’ is traditional and misleading. It is used, in fact, to refer to tenses in which present tense is taken as their deictic center. The term is misleading in the sense that there is no absolute time reference, it is impossible to have an absolute time reference. The only way which we can locate a situation in time is relative to some other earlier established time point, the present moment is just one of an infinite number of such time points that we can choose as reference point. We continue with the term ‘absolute tense’ to mean a tense which present moment as deictic center is part of its meaning; whereas relative tense refers to a tense which does not include as part of its meaning the present moment as deictic center. Considering the present moment as deictic center, there are three basic time references in Persian, namely, past, present and future time references. As I mentioned, Persian language does not have a true future tense, but to indicate futurity, we usually use the present tense construction, where the reference time is not obvious and overt from the context, we use future temporal adverbials. Present tense means the time of the situation and present moment are simultaneous, that is, coincidence of the time of the situation with the present moment that we talk about the situation. Past tense means location of the situation prior to the present moment and future time reference means location of the situation after the present moment which in Persian it is indicated by temporal adverbial rather than the verb itself. To clarify each tense, we turn to the following examples. Examples falling under rubric of present tense are as follows; (1) a.	Man	en	 kishti-ra	‘titanic’	nam	mi-kon-am I	this	ship-ACC	Titanic		name	DUR-do-PRE-1SG ‘I call this ship the ‘Titanic’ In the above example the prefix mi- is a big puzzle, which different linguists have given different propositions. Strictly speaking, the prefix mi- is functioning differently in different constructions which I will argue about it in details. Specifying the functional usage of the prefix mi- and justifying absence of the future tense in Persian are the two main concerns of this paper. After having a short look at relative and absolute tense, I will directly present types of tense under which in part of present tense I will fully discuss functional nature of the prefix mi- and its different usages in several other constructions. The above example also is another example of ‘absolute tense’ indicating that the time of naming of the ship as ‘Titanic’ constitutes the act of naming the ship. To state the matter simpler, the time of the situation is simultaneous or coincident with the present moment. Referring to the time line, past tense locates a situation to the left of the present moment time point. Past tense, indeed, means location of situation in time prior to the present moment. It is important to bear in mind that past tense simply locates the situation prior to the present moment and it says nothing about whether the past situation occupies a single point prior to the present moment or a stretch of time. It also says nothing about whether the situation continues to the present or into future, it only locates the situation in the past, such as; (2) a.	Deeruz	     john    qauldad	  ma-ra		da    paund	be-deh-ad yesterday    John    promise-PAST me-ACC	ten   pound	SUBJ-give-PRE-3SG ‘yesterday John promised to give me ten pounds’ b.	Kareem	az	1982 ta 1992	dar	Kabul	 zendagi	mi-kard Kareem	from 	1982 to 1992	in	Kabul	 life		DUR-do-PAST ‘Kareem lived in Kabul from 1982 to 1992’ c.	Ta	hala	en	maraz		ghaire-qabel-aelaj	ast Up to	now	this	disease		in-able-cure		is ‘Up to now this disease is incurable’ In the above examples, the situations are located prior to the present moment, that is, past tense has only located the situations prior to the present moment and it has nothing to do with the extension of time in the past or continuation of it in the future. As illustrated, in absolute tense the reference point for location of situation in time is the present moment whereas in relative tense, the reference for location of situation is some point in time given by the context, not necessarily the present moment. In Persian, finite verbs usually have absolute time reference whereas nonfinite verbs characteristically have relative time reference. Before going through the relative tense, it is important, in particular in contrast with absolute tense, to look at the temporal adverbials and the way they are distinguishing absolute and relative tenses and specifically how they locate a situation relative to the present moment, for instance, imruz ‘today’ (locates the situation to the present moment), deruz ‘yesterday’ (locates situation prior to the present moment), farda ‘tomorrow’ (locates the situation after the present moment), these are, in fact, all instances of absolute time reference. Moreover; there are some other temporal adverbials that locate a situation relative to some other reference point given by the context, such as; dar haman ruz ‘on the same day’, dar ruz pesh ‘on the day before’, dar ruze bad ‘on the next day’; these are all instances of relative time reference. In a sentence containing relative temporal adverbial like; ‘on the next day Kareem looked out of his bedroom window’, one should look for the reference point to be able to interpret the sentence correctly. In this sentence, on the next day, is not clear, that is, the next day after what? But the rest of the sentence like; ‘tomorrow Kareem will look out of his bedroom window’, is quite clear. In Persian, present participle clauses have relative tense, such as; (3)	a.	Zamani	amadan	       u		ba	zamin		aftad While	come-INF	he		on	earth		fall-PAST ‘while coming, he fell on the ground’ b.	Zamani	payen	 raft-an	      Kareem-ra		did-am While	down	 go-PAST-INF         Kareem-ACC	see-PAST-1SG ‘While going down, I saw Kareem’. The time reference of the above present participles amadan, ‘coming’ and raftan ‘going’ are simultaneous with the absolute time reference of the finite verbs’ aftad ‘fell’and didam ‘saw’. Since the time reference of the finite verbs are absolute time reference in the past, the present participles gets the same time reference. This suggests that for relative sentences all what is required is to identify a reference point, the range of potential reference points being, in principle, all those compatible with the given context. Therefore; the present moment is, unless barred by the context, always functioning as reference point for relative tenses. It means that a relative tense is one which is interpreted relative to reference point provided by the context; since the context always provides the present moment. 3.3.	Types of tense and their formation In the first place, it is very important to discern that tense and aspect are intricately bound, and some Persian scholars argue that aspect is more salient of the two grammatical categories in the verbal systems of Persian language (Mahootian, Shahrzad.; Gebhardt, Lewis 1997). Both tense and aspect in Persian are derived either from the present stem or past stem of the verbs and likewise; past tense is derived from the infinitive forms. Though the relationship of the present stem is not always transparent with the infinitive and past, often the present stem is derived from the infinitive form simply by dropping the infinitival ending. In Persian often, however, there are additional differences between the present stem and the infinitive form of the verbs, and once in a blue moon, there is no discernible relation between them (Shahrzad: 1997). The following examples are given for more clarification; English		      infinitive			present stem		past stem ‘to go’			raftan				raw-			raft- ‘to say’		goftan				go-			goft- ‘to hit’		zadan				zan-			zad- ‘to listen’		shnidan			       shnaw-			shnid- 3.3.1.	Formation and meaning of present tense There is no particular tense form in Persian to restrictedly be used for indicating generic statements, habitual action and universal truths (Gebhardt 1997). To express habitual actions, universal truths, we use the ordinary present tense which is formed by prefixing  the durative mi-to the stem indicating present tense and is followed by the inflectional morphemes expressing personal agreement. It is worth of note that Persian linguists and grammarians have different proposals on the function of the prefix mi-, some linguists have suggested that mi- shows ongoing nature of the event (Ghomeshi 2001). Other assumed mi- as indicator of habitual event either in the present or past tense (Lambton 1961). Mahutiyan (1999) categorizes mi- as the marker of both habitual and progressive aspects. According to Azita H. Taleghani (1984) mi- is an aspect marker and semantically refers to both habituality and continuity of an action, such as; (1)	a.	Xahar-am		har	sal		paris		mi-raw-ad Sister-1SG-PC		every	year		paris		DUR-go-PRE-3SG ‘My sister goes to Paris every year’ b.	Mah		dawr-e			zamin		mi-carx-ad Moon		around-EZ		earth		DUR-revolve-PRE-3SG ‘The moon revolves around the earth’ c.	Sharif		ba		maktab		mi-raw-ad Sharif		to		school		DUR-go-3SG ‘Sharif goes to school’ In this section, I would like to begin my argument regarding the real nature of the prefix mi-, I believe that it has many various usages depending upon the constructions in which it is used. Unfortunately, Persian linguists have not considered the usage of mi- in constructions indicating futurity; they have specified mi- as if it has a single usage. The prefix mi- is used in simple present and past tense as aspectual marker to mark habituality which this claim made by Lambton (1961), I think, is adequate. (2)	a.	u	har	ruz	ba		maktab		mi-raw-ad he	every	day	to		school		DUR-go-PRE-3SG ‘he goes to school every day’ b.	u	har	ruz	ba		maktab		mi-raft he	every	ruz	to		school		DUR-go-PAST ‘he went to school every day’ In the above two examples, the prefix mi- is used as aspectual marker indicating habituality. Secondly, I claim that the prefix mi- is used in present continuous and past continuous to mark the verbs for imperfectivity showing progressivity. Basically, in Persian there is not any specific construction indicating situations being in progress, it is indicated by almost the same structure as we have for simple present and simple past. In simple present and simple past we use temporal adverbial helping the context precisely indicating habituality, whereas in denoting present and past continuous tense we don’t need any temporal adverbials. So far the definition given by Mahutiyan (1999) is adequate to keep up with it. He proposed that mi- can be both as habitual and progressive markers, such as; (3)	a.	man	dars-am-ra			mi-xan-am I	lesson-PC-ACC		       PRG-read-PRE-1SG ‘I am studying my lesson’ b.	man	dars-am-ra			mi-xand-am I	lesson-PC-ACC		       PRG-read-PAST-1SG ‘I was studying my lesson’ What is clear from the above examples is that the prefix mi- is used as aspectual marker highlighting the verbs being imperfective, that is, the actions denoted by the verbs are not completed, and they are in progress. Thirdly, the new category of function that I suggest for the prefix mi- is mood marker. As we know, mood deals with the situation of speaker towards the actuality of the event. The prefix mi- is used in simple present structure indicating future time showing wish, desire and probability. I believe that when it is used indicating futurity, its function varies from that of simple present. In future time reference it only marks the verb for modal usage, whereas, in simple present tense it functions either as aspectual marker indicating habituality or progressivity. Normally, the usages of simple present and future time reference are determined by the context, where it is not clear we normally use future temporal adverbial for future construction. (4)	a.	u	har	hafta	kar	mi-kun-ad He	every	week	work	DUR-do-PRE-3SG ‘he works every week’ (habitual aspect) b.	u	farda		ba	maktab		mi-raw-ad He	tomorrow	to	school		IND-go-3SG ‘he goes to school tomorrow’ (mood marker) If we remove the temporal adverbials indicating present time and future time, then the function of the prefix mi- changes into imperfective aspectual indicating situations which are in progress, such as; (5)	c.	u	kar	mi-kun-ad He	work	PRG-do-PRE-3SG ‘he was working’ (progressive aspect) d.	u		ba	maktab		mi-raw-ad He		to	school		PRG-go-PRE-3SG ‘he is going to school’ (progressive aspect) In modern Persian, we notice that there are some verbs such as ‘dashtan’ ‘to have’ and ‘ast’ ‘to be’ that they don’t need the indicative prefix mi- for representing universal facts or truths in the present tense, such as; (6)	a.	Hama		parenda-gan			par		dar-and All		bird-PL			       feather		have-PRE-3PL ‘all birds have feathers’ b.	An		dewar				ast That		wall				is ‘that is wall’ As mentioned above, the prefix mi- is used both in simple present and simple past tense to mark the simple present verb for durativity and habituality, in this case we use habitual temporal adverbials with the mentioned constructions. If there is no temporal adverbial, mi- is functioning as imperfective aspect marker indicating that the situation is in progress at the present moment. Semantically, Persian present tense refers to an action which is happening at the present time habitually, or continuously. Similarly past imperfect construction either refers to a past habit or an action which occurred continuously in the past. Therefore, I sum up my claims that besides what Persian linguists expressed regarding sentential function of mi-, I as a native speaker of this language, suggest one more category or usage of the prefix mi- as a mood marker. As we saw above, Lambton (1961) suggested the prefix mi- in simple present and past tense as aspectual marker to mark habituality and Mahutiyan (1999) proposed that mi- can be both as habitual and imperfective marker. What I suggest first, the prefix mi- contains the combination of the particulars given by Lambton and Mahutiyan, in my opinion according to the data analyzed above, the definitions given by these two linguists complete each other, that is, mi- is an aspectual marker both indicating imperfective aspect indicating a situation which is in progressive and habitual aspect indicating a situation happening habitually either in the present or past. Secondly, what I argue is to assign a new function to the prefix mi-, it is a mood marker denoting wish, desire and probability. Thus; to get the gist of my argument, I have argued that the prefix mi- is functioning the same as the word xah ‘will’ considered as mood marker as well as imperfect aspectual marker showing habituality and progressivity. Now that we have got a clear sense of the prefix mi- it is worthwhile to go through forming present tense and the way personal endings work in this language.

Personal present verb endings: singular				plural FIRST PERSON			-am					-im SECOND PERSON			-i 					-id THIRD PERSON			-ad					-and But there is one exception to the ordinary or regular present tense formation with the verb budan ‘to be’. The present tense form of this verb can be expressed in three different ways; through the usage of ‘the clitic form’, the hast form ‘be’ and the present stem bash ‘be’. 1.	The clitic form Usage of the clitic from is one of the most common ways to express ‘to be’. Clitic forms used in this case are usually unstressed. Choosing third person singular clitics depends upon the phonological consideration and the level of formality of the speech which the clitic –ast is the most formal one. Paradigm of the present tense clitics of ‘to be’ Singular					plural FIRST PERSON		-am						-im SECOND PERSON		-i						-id THIRD PERSON		-ast						-and (1)	a.	Ma 				daneshju-im We				student-are-PRE-2PL ‘we are students’ b.	u				inja-ast He/she				here-is-PRE-3SG ‘he is here’ 2.	The hast form Another way to express the copula in the present tense is to use the nonenclitic lexical item hast ‘be’. The lexical item ‘hast’ properly inflects for person and number to show its agreement with the subject ( Shahrzad 1997). But this paradigm for ‘hast’ is irregular, unlike the most other verbs in the present tense which are infelected with the suffix-ad in the third person singular number, ‘hast’ takes no third person singular number inflectional morpheme.

Paradigm of the present tense of ‘to be’ Singular			plural FIRST PERSON			hast-am			       hast-im SECOND PERSON			hati-i				hast-id THIRD PERSON			hast-Ø				hast-and (1)	a.	Ma					danishju		hast-im We					student			are-PRE-2PL ‘we are students. b.	u			yak		moalem		        hast He/she			a		teacher			is-PRE-Ø ‘he/she is a teacher’ 3.	The bash form Another present tense form of budan ‘to be’ is exclusively used in literary context. In this usage, the present tense form of ‘budan’ is derived from the present root ‘bash’. The following examples are provided for more clarity; (1)	mi-bash-am DUR-be-PRE-1SG Coupled with the above example, bash also can be used in subjunctive and imperative constructions, such as; (2)	a.	Momken-ast			inja				bash-am Possible-is				here				be-PRE-1SG ‘I might be here’ b.	Shayad				raft-a				bash-and Maybe					go-PAST-PSPT		        be-PRE-3PL ‘they might have gone’ c.	Mawazeb				bash Careful					be-PRE-Ø ‘Be careful’! 3.3.2.	 Formation and meaning of past tense Simple past tense form of the verbs in Persian normally is derived from the infinitive forms of the verbs, it is derived via dropping the infinitival ending –an and the appropriate inflectional morpheme indicating person and number is attached to properly convey the meanings in simple past tense (Mahootian, Shahrzad 2005). The following examples are in simple past form derived by dropping the infinitival ending –an; English 				infinitive					past stem ‘to eat’				xurdan						xurd ‘to kill’				koshtan					       kosht ‘to say’				goftan						goft ‘to see’				deedan						deed ‘to hear’				shneedan					shneed ‘to go’					raftan						raft ‘to understand’			       fahmeedan					fahmeed Considering the above examples, we readily could derive the past tense form of the respective verbs by dropping the infinitival ending –an from the infinitives and by adding inflectional morphemes referring to person and number the past form is constructed. The past personal verb endings are as follows; Simple past personal verb endings Singular				plural FIRST PERSON			-am					-im SECOND PERSON			-i					-id THIRD PERSON			Ø					- and There are generally two common paradigms of verbs in Persian; inflection paradigm for past tense form of kardan ‘to do’ and budan ‘to be’. For more precision, each one is presented below separately; Simple past paradigm of the verb kardan ‘to do’ Singular				plural FIRST PERSON				kard-am				kard-im SECOND PERSON				kard-i					kard-id THIRS PERSON				kard- Ø				kard-and And also for the verb budan ‘to be’ in the past, the regular past tense personal endings are suffixed to the past stem bud- such as; Simple past paradigm of the verb budan ‘to be’ Singular				plural FIRST PERSON			bud-am				       bud-im SECOND PERSON			bud-i					bud-id THIRD PERSON			bud- Ø					bud-and It is really important to discern the degree of remoteness of action in the past, for instance, if an action is completed before another action in the past, we use past perfect which is the aspectual usage of the verb implying completion of the earlier action which would not be the concern of this paper. Semantically, Simple past tense in Persian is applied to refer to actions or generally situations occurred in the past at some specified time which does not have any effect on, or any relevance to the present (Mahootian, Shahrzad 2005), such as; (1)	a.	u 		deeroz		ba		maktab			raft He/she		yesterday	to		school			go-PAST-Ø ‘He/she went to school yesterday’ b.	Sharif		hafta-e gozashta	ba	man		zang-zad Sharif		week-EZA -last	to	me		ring-do-PAST-Ø ‘Sharif called me last week’ c.	Man		deeroz			kar-kardam I 		yesterday		work-do-PAST-1SG ‘I worked yesterday’ d.	u		sal-e-gozashta		zeyad		gerya-mi-kard He/she		year-EZA-last		much		cry-DUR-do-PAST-Ø ‘He/she cried much last year’ It is also possible in Persian imperfect past tense to use the prefix mi- along with the past stem of the respective verb followed by personal endings. In this case the aspectual marker mi- is to mark the predicates for habituality or continuity, such as; (2)	a.	Man	har	mah	yak	ketab	mi-xarid-am I	every	month	one	book	DUR-buy-PAST-1SG ‘I used to buy a book every month’ b.	Anha	har	ruz	shahr	mi-raft-and They	every	day	city	DUR-go-PAST-1SG There are two other less common usages of simple past in Persian in certain clauses of time relating to, or indicating futurity such as; (3)	d.	Aamad-am		diga Come-PAST-1SG	all right ‘all right, I am coming’ e.	raft-am Go-PAST-1SG ‘I will go’ f.	tu	boro,		man		aamad-am You	go		I		come-PAST-1SG ‘you go, I will come’ I think these structures may not be so strange to non-native speakers of Persian, because within each language there are some structures deviating the real and normal usages of some tense and conveying different meanings, in this case, there is not a one to one correspondence between the form of the tense and the meaning which is rendered. For example, in English, we also have some past structures which are used to indicate futurity but the meanings rendered are in the future, such as; (4)	a.	Could you open the door please? b.	Would you do me a favor? c.	Should I do the homework?

3.3.3.	Formation and meaning of future time reference Although Persian does not have future tense, but we use some structures which indicate future time. Future time construction is used restrictedly in the realms of lectures, announcement and other formal areas. The future time construction is basically made of the present stem xah ‘will’+present tense verbal inflectional to agree with the subject + the third person past stem of the action being referred to (Mahootian and Shahrzad 2005) as follows; (1)      a. Man			xah-am				raft I			will-1SG			go-PAST ‘I will go’ c.	u			xah-ad				goft He/she			will-3SG			say-PAST ‘He/she will say’ d.	Ma			xah-im				goft We			will-2PL			say- PAST ‘We will say’ e.	Anha			xah-and			raft They			will-3PL			go-PAST ‘they will go’ f.	Shuma			xah-i				raft You			will-2PL			go-PAST ‘You will go’ As I mentioned above, usage of future construction with xah ‘will’ is very rare. In order to indicate the normal future time, we have another option to use the present tense form of a verb with future meaning which in this case we don’t even need to use the word xah ‘will’. In this respect, the meaning which is indicated by xah ‘will’ is indicated by the prefix mi- which I fully discussed in previous section. Once we proved that xah ‘will’ is functioning as a modal verb then, what semantically replaces it is also a mood marker. Thus; the prefix mi- in simple present structure indicating futurity semantically functions the same as a modal verb. The same modality which is expressed by the auxiliary xah ‘will’ is expressed by the prefix mi- and semantically they replace each other. We use the simple present structure to indicate futurity if the futurity is not clear from the context, we use temporal adverbials indicating futurity, for more clarity consider the following examples;

(2) a.	Baran			mi-bar-ad Rain			IND-rain-PRE-3SG ‘It will rain’ For more clarification we use temporal adverbial; (3) a.	Farada			baran			mi-bar-ad Tomorrow		rain			IND-rain-PRE-3SG ‘It is going to rain tomorrow’ b.	Anha			sal-e-degar		xarij		mi-raw-and They			sal-EZA-next		abroad		IND-go-PRE-3PL ‘They will go abroad next year’ In this part, I would like to argue that we don’t have future tense in Persian; first we have common construction of present tense which indicates future time reference. It means that logically we don’t need to have an extra future tense and the distinction of tense in this language will clearly be past and non-past. Second, tenses normally are indicated by the main verb in this language, in simple present and simple past we don’t have any case in which tense be reflected by any auxiliary verb. Thirdly, xah ‘will’ in Persian is a modal auxiliary as well as in English which indicates the situation of speakers towards actuality of the situation. Fourthly, the word xah ‘will’ which is used as future tense marker has two different forms; present xah ‘will’ and past xast ‘would’. It means that we use the present form of the word xah ‘will’ which structurally is present but semantically is in the future. In fact this is what I mentioned in the beginning of this paper that there is not always a one to one correspondence between the form and function of the tense, for instance, simple past tense form of a verb in Persian was used to indicate future meaning. In fact, the structure formed by xah ‘will’ is used to show probability, wish, desire and accidentality rather than futurity, such as;

(4) a.	u	farda		mi-yay-ad He	tomorrow	IND-come-PRE-3SG ‘he comes tomorrow’ (present structure, future meaning) b.	u	farda		xah-ad		amad He	tomorrow	will-3SG	come-PAST ‘he will come tomorrow’ (future time reference showing probability) As previously I mentioned, some linguists and grammarians in Persian called the prefix mi- as habitual aspect marker and some called it as indicating ongoing situation. Now as well as the above mentioned usages of the prefix mi- it would be very logical and rational to suggest and call mi-as a mood marker, since it exactly shows the situation of speaker towards actualization of a situation, as the word xah ‘will’ indicates, when he is not sure of happening of a situation or he uses it when he is in doubt.

Conclusion In this article I have explored and investigated tense which is one of the categories of the verbal system. Before discussing and analyzing tense, I began my discussion with time. According to my observation and the concept I got from the literature review, time, conventionally has been defined as straight time line on which we locate the situations. The left side of this time line considered as past time and the right side of it is considered as future time, but the central part where it is libeled ‘O’, is present moment. I have elucidated that time lime can be of use in two senses; first, when we locate situation as a dot on the time line it means point of time which is explaining tense. Secondly, we can show a situation occupying a stretch of time which in this case the time line explains it in terms of aspect. Getting clear understanding of time, we have gradually begun with tense and considered tense as location of situation in time. First we divided tense into ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ in terms of deictic center. By absolute tense we mean that the situations are measured based on the present moment, or in other words, present moment is functioning as deictic center for absolute tense, whereas the reference point for relative tense is not necessarily present moment. The reference point is either determined by the context or other situations functioning as reference point for relative tense which both cases are supported by adequate examples. Another classification of tense is simple present and simple past. Simple present tense has been analyzed both in terms of construction and meaning; simple present is indicating a situation which is simultaneous with the present moment. There was also one puzzling issue with the determination of the nature of the prefix mi- in present tense which I fully argued about its usage and analyzed it as a mood marker as well as aspect marker. Syntactically, present tense is formed by the prefix mi- attached to the verb stem followed by personal agreement morpheme which varies from person to person. Past tense is another category of tense which semantically indicates a situation which occurred before present moment, that is, indicates a situation which is located to the left of the time line. Syntactically, to construct past tense, normally the suffix –an which is an infinitival marker is dropped and personal agreement morphemes are added to the stems according to the respective person. The third category which I named of which as future time reference, has a specific construction. Most of Persian linguists and grammarians called it as future tense, but I argued and reasoned that it is not a real and true future tense but future time reference. I argued and expressed my own notion as a native speaker, first, the word xah ‘will’ is the same as English will, second, we express future tense by simple present construction accompanied by temporal adverbials and third, when we use xah ‘will’ it shows the situation of the speaker towards the actuality of the situation rather than futurity. Finally, tense is indicated by the form the main verb in Persian. No such case is found in Persian to indicate tense by auxiliary verb. Thus; in the long run, I concluded that xah ‘will’ is the modal usage of the verb not the tense form which we can replace it by the prefix mi-. The end

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