Tense: tense
Tense
Tense is a feature that specifies the time when the action took / takes / will take place, in relation to the current moment or to another action in the utterance. In Bulgarian aspect and tense are separate, although not completely independent of each other.
In Bulgarian there are 9 tenses: 3 synthetic and 6 analytic.
Since the feature Tense is assigned to a single word, i.e. it relates to synthetic forms, in Bulgarian it is applicable to only 3 tenses: Present, Aorist and Imperfect.
Past: past tense / preterite / aorist
The past tense denotes actions that happened before the current moment. In Bulgarian, this is aorist. It can be used with both imperfective and perfective verbs.
Examples
- Те дойдоха навреме. / Te doydoha navreme “They came on time”.
- Взе ли си изпита? / Vze li si izpita? “Did you take the exam?”
Pres: present tense
The present tense denotes actions that are happening right now, that are crossing the moment of speaking or that usually happen. In Bulgarian present tense has a lot of usages: for actual activities (where the perfective verbs are blocked); for historical events, for habitual activities, etc.
Examples
- В момента чета. / V momenta cheta “I am reading now”.
- Всеки ден чета. / Vseki den cheta “I read every day”.
Imp: imperfect
Imperfect is a special case of the past tense. It denotes actions that are happening during some past moment. These actions might continue after the moment of speaking, but also might not, i.e. the evidence is not in the form itself, but it is in the context. Both verbs - perfective and imperfective - are used in imperfect tense.
- Когато се прибрах вкъщи, децата вече спяха. / Kogato se pribrah vkashti, detsata veche spyaha “When I came home, the children were already asleep.”
- Щом дойдеше, веднага запалваше цигара. / Shtom doydeshe, vednaga zapalvashe tsigara “Every time he came, he always lit a cigarette”.
Treebank Statistics (UD_Bulgarian)
This feature is universal.
It occurs with 3 different values: Imp, Past, Pres.
18393 tokens (13%) have a non-empty value of Tense.
5961 types (24%) occur at least once with a non-empty value of Tense.
2548 lemmas (18%) occur at least once with a non-empty value of Tense.
The feature is used with 3 part-of-speech tags: VERB (14273; 10% instances), AUX (3652; 3% instances), ADJ (468; 0% instances).
VERB
14273 VERB tokens (92% of all VERB tokens) have a non-empty value of Tense.
The most frequent other feature values with which VERB and Tense co-occurred: Voice=Act (14246; 100%), Gender=EMPTY (13256; 93%), Definite=EMPTY (12843; 90%), VerbForm=Fin (12843; 90%), Mood=Ind (12816; 90%), Person=3 (10650; 75%), Number=Sing (10042; 70%), Aspect=Imp (7942; 56%).
VERB tokens may have the following values of Tense:
Imp(921; 6% of non-emptyTense): нямаше, имаше, трябваше, щеше, можеше, имало, гледаше, знаеше, имах, говорешеPast(4473; 31% of non-emptyTense): каза, съобщи, заяви, стана, обяви, съобщиха, предаде, разбра, би, обясниPres(8879; 62% of non-emptyTense): има, може, няма, трябва, е, могат, имат, става, иска, могаEMPTY(1219): направено, избран, изправени, обвинен, била, виж, представена, било, изпратени, настанени
| Paradigm мога | Pres | Past | Imp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Definite=Ind|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|VerbForm=Part | могъл | можел | |
| Definite=Ind|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|VerbForm=Part | могла | можела | |
| Definite=Ind|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|VerbForm=Part | могло | можело | |
| Definite=Ind|Number=Plur|VerbForm=Part | могли | можели | |
| Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|VerbForm=Fin | мога | можах | можех |
| Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|VerbForm=Fin | можеш | ||
| Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|VerbForm=Fin | може | можа | можеше |
| Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|VerbForm=Fin | можем | Можехме | |
| Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=2|VerbForm=Fin | можете | ||
| Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|VerbForm=Fin | могат | можаха | можеха |
AUX
3652 AUX tokens (46% of all AUX tokens) have a non-empty value of Tense.
The most frequent other feature values with which AUX and Tense co-occurred: VerbForm=Fin (3652; 100%), Voice=Act (3602; 99%), Mood=Ind (3602; 99%), Person=3 (3333; 91%), Aspect=Imp (3322; 91%), Number=Sing (2607; 71%).
AUX tokens may have the following values of Tense:
Past(623; 17% of non-emptyTense): бе, беше, бяха, би, бях, бяхмеPres(3029; 83% of non-emptyTense): е, са, бъде, съм, бъдат, сме, си, сте, бъдем, бъдешEMPTY(4250): да, ще, бил, били, била, бих, било, биха, е, бихте
| Paradigm съм | Pres | Past |
|---|---|---|
| Mood=Cnd|Number=Sing|Person=3 | би | |
| Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Voice=Act | съм | бях |
| Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Voice=Act | си | беше |
| Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Voice=Act | е | бе, беше |
| Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Voice=Act | сме | бяхме |
| Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=2|Voice=Act | сте | |
| Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Voice=Act | са | бяха |
ADJ
468 ADJ tokens (4% of all ADJ tokens) have a non-empty value of Tense.
The most frequent other feature values with which ADJ and Tense co-occurred: Voice=Act (468; 100%), VerbForm=Part (468; 100%), Degree=Pos (415; 89%), Definite=Def (287; 61%), Aspect=Imp (286; 61%), Number=Sing (279; 60%).
ADJ tokens may have the following values of Tense:
Past(190; 41% of non-emptyTense): миналата, останалите, миналия, пострадали, загиналите, изминалата, останали, участвали, записалите, изгорялPres(278; 59% of non-emptyTense): следващата, управляващите, следващите, следващия, водещи, предстоящата, предстоящите, присъстващите, следващото, водещEMPTY(11746): народното, други, българската, другите, нова, нови, последните, 2001, друг, европейската
| Paradigm присъствам | Pres | Past |
|---|---|---|
| Definite=Def|Number=Plur | присъстващите | |
| Definite=Ind|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing | присъстващ | присъствал |
Tense seems to be lexical feature of ADJ. 99% lemmas (197) occur only with one value of Tense.
Relations with Agreement in Tense
The 10 most frequent relations where parent and child node agree in Tense:
VERB –[conj]–> VERB (1122; 79%),
VERB –[ccomp]–> VERB (939; 57%),
VERB –[advcl]–> VERB (705; 60%),
VERB –[xcomp]–> VERB (353; 55%),
VERB –[csubj]–> VERB (98; 62%),
VERB –[csubj:pass]–> VERB (29; 51%).
Tense in other languages: [am] [ar] [bg] [bxr] [ca] [ckb] [cop] [cs] [cu] [da] [de] [el] [en] [es] [et] [eu] [fa] [fi] [fo] [fr] [ga] [gl] [got] [grc] [he] [hi] [hr] [hu] [id] [it] [ja] [kk] [kmr] [ko] [la] [lv] [mr] [nl] [no] [pl] [pt] [ro] [ru] [sa] [sk] [sla] [sl] [so] [sr] [sv] [swl] [ta] [tr] [u] [ug] [uk] [ur] [urj] [vi] [yue] [zh]