Tense System in Argobba

This study describes and provides a detailed analysis of the tense system in the Shonke/Tollaha variety of Argobba. It identifies kinds of tenses and describes construction of each type of tense. The data for this research was collected using elicitation method from those people who are native speakers of Argobba language. The informants were selected from Shonke /Tollaha in south eastern Wollo in Amhara region. In Argobba, there are six kinds of tense. These are simple past, past perfect, past continuous, present perfect, simple non-past and present continuous tenses. Argobba has not simple present or simple future tenses. Argobba has tense markers for all tenses with the exception of simple past tense. Simple past is formed with perfective verb form without tense marker whereas simple non-past is constructed with imperfective verb form with tense markers. The past perfect is formed with gerund or converb and the past auxiliary imbär ‘was’/ ‘were’. Present perfect is also formed with gerund or converb and auxiliary marker. In this kind of tense, both gerund and auxiliary accept subject agreement suffixes, but the existential auxiliary hall does not accept subject agreement suffixes for 3SMs. In Argobba, there are more than one ways for the formation of present and past progressive tenses. These tenses are marked by prefixing ïyyi- to the perfective verb form and combining auxiliary verb ïmbär ‘was’ /‘were’ for the past progressive and the copula näy for present progressive. Besides to this, past progressive tense is also formed with infinitive form of a given verb and the auxiliary verb ïmbär ‘was’ /‘were’. Present progressive tense is also constructed with infinitive form of a given verb and auxiliary verb suffix -ïll- or -ll- attached to the infinitive verb. Finally, it is recommended that further research regarding the interaction between tense and aspect should be carried in the language.