There are two important
characteristics of these forms that justify their treatment in this fashion.
(1)
They are a closed set.
(2)
Each form in the paradigm is
essentially a whole. They cannot be sub-divided or analyzed either formally
or semantically in terms of individual forms of which they are composed,
except in the morphological description of these forms. The thirty-eight
pairs in the basic paradigm can be divided into sets in different ways, each
division being in terms of a formal feature which is linked to a semantic
one.
The paradigm also consists of some non-inflexional
features like causation, report and movement. These will be explained
separately in the subsequent sections.
2.5.3.2.1.
Tense :
Mishmi shows a four-way tense system. The apposition is
between past and future with an immediate and non-immediate distinction made
for each. Each tense is marked by a distinct suffix. Semantically it is the
temporal orientation of the event. Taking the time of the speaker’s
utterance as reference, whatever happened before that is termed past and
whatever will happen after that is termed future. Immediate and
non-immediate indicate the relative time lag between the event and the
utterance. This time lag is rather abstract in the sense that there is no
clear-cut demarcation of the boundary between the two. It is more of the
speaker’s attitude towards the event rather than the actual interval that
elapsed after the event is over and the speaker talks of it.
The four-way tense system is not uniform throughout the verbal inflexion.
The tense distinctions vary when they are associated with various aspects
and will be discussed along with those aspects. The state verbs and
non-terminal process verbs show a three way tense inflexion
m-piy-ne
