On the Tense System of Bangla

The existing literature on the grammatical description of Bangla tense is basically a mimicry of the English tense system. The literature is also not developed on sound morphological and syntactic treatment. This paper is concerned with the morphological system of Bangla tense and their syntactic properties. The scope of our study is limited to eight simplex forms of verb which are inflected for aspect, tense and person. Our study examines how these markers are juxtaposed and finally proposes a template for Bangla verb system which exhibits modification from the conventional one. After that, we attempt to explain the syntactic properties of Bangla tense within the minimalist program framework. Our account for Bangla tense represents a critical problem in its treatment of T position. We show that Bangla lacks theoretical motivation to posit a T position external to the vP shell. What happens in the vP shell for Bangla language remains unexplored and this paper does not extend to any solution for the issue, however, it identifies why present literature is inadequate to explain the T position in Bangla.