Overview

There are five different tenses: the past, imperfect, passive present, prospective, and future. The passive present tense is for things outside of time, such as general statements, or things happening in the moment when used with the progressive or persistive verb aspect. The past is for referring to a single moment in time that had already occurred. The imperfect is for referring to a collection or interval of moments in the past. The future and prospective behave similarly to the past and imperfect with the difference of refer to events that will have and have not happened yet. 

Sub Tenses

Sub tenses are used to add more clarity as to when an action happens in time. They can be applied to all tenses except the passive present. There are two sub tenses: the remote and the immediate. The remote is used to indicate the moment or moments being referred to has either occurred a while ago, or will occur after a considerable amount of time. The immediate is used to indicate the moment or moments that have occurred very recently, or will occur in a short amount of time.

Tense Marks

In writing, tense is often specified through the use of a tense mark above the stressed vowel rather than using a tense particle.

Note that the tense mark for the passive present is not required since a phrase is assumed to be in that tense unless specified directly or through context. Since a sentence can only occur in one tense at a time, a sentence should have one variant of the tense mark. The tense mark always goes above the macron if the macron is present. If the stress in a word is no longer on the second to last syllable, the tense mark must be moved accordingly.

Tense Particles

These particles are placed directly before the sentence. Tense particles must match the tense of the phrase. The particle is not required once a tense has been established and or a tense mark is used.

Sub Tense Suffixes

Sub tenses cannot be expressed through tense marks, so the tense particle is initially required to set the tense of the phrase