Indicative. Tense in Turkish

Abstract

This article presents analysis of the verbal tense system of the contemporary Turkish on the basis of a
conception elaborated by the author before rejecting the „time of the utterance“ as the central referencepoint of the tense-meanings and supposing the existence in the Turkish of three (present, past and
future) grammaticalized reference-points (periods) everyone of which plays the part of the center of one of the three subsystems of tense forms. The forms constituting the primary (from the diachronically view-point) subsystem transmit correlation between any action and the present reference-period, the secondary and tertiary ones include forms rendering correlation between actions and respectively the present or the future reference-periods.

Keywords:

indicative, tense, Turkish, system, subsystem, reference-point (period), primary subsystem, secondary subsystem, tertiary subsystem