| 7.7. Inflected Forms |
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The inflectional categories of the verb stems are:
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| (1) There tenses- |
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(a) Present |
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(b) Past |
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(c) Future |
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| (2) Eight moods - |
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(a) Indicative |
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(b) Habitual |
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(c) Negative |
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(d) Prohibitive |
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(e) Imperative |
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(f) Conditional |
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(g) Infinitive |
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(h) Obligative |
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| (e) There aspects - |
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(a) Durative |
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(b) Perfective |
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(c) Imperfective |
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Tense indicates the time of the action, event or state of affairs reffered to in the sentence, with reference to the time of utterance. Mood indicates the attitude ot the speaker like, certainty, uncertainty, wish, doubt, suppostion ans so on, towards what he is saying. Hockett (1958 : 237) observes that aspect has to do “not with the location of an event in time. but with its temporal distribution of contour”.
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Lyons (1969 : 315) too notes that “aspect unlike tense is not a deictic category. It is not relative to the time of utternaces”.
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All the three tenses occur in the in the indicative mood. Habitual occurs only in the past tense. Negative has three forms: present, past and future negative. Infinitive has the present form only. The infinitive is also used as optative. The imperative and prohibitive make no distinction of tenses. The conditional has three forms: present, past and contrafactual conditional.
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Among the aspects durative is available in all the tenses. The perfective and imperfective are used only in the past tense.
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