I

ArticlesThe Forms and Meanings
of Past Tense
A Contrastive Study ofPapua New Guinea

Masahiko Nose

Shiga University / Associate Professor

004

Introduction

This study attempts to clarify the areal features of past tense forms in four languages ofthe Madang area of Papua New Guinea. Past
tense forms occur in almost all major languages(except Chinese and Indonesian, for example),but their forms and functions vary, and it is noteasy to analyze them. A goal of this study is to
examine the tense and aspect features of theselanguages.
Specifically, this study investigates past tense
forms from morphological and semantic perspectives and moreover, considers theirgrammaticalization paths. Morphologically,
this study considers the degrees of grammaticaland semantic complexity of the forms, defines
the past tense features of this area, and examines the relationships between past andperfect/perfective aspects. We examined four
languages and checked the past tense featuresin terms of form-meaning relationships. The
languages were Amele and Kobon (Trans–New
Guinea languages), Bel (Austronesian), and
Tok Pisin (an English-based creole). Generally,
Trans–New Guinea languages such as Amele
and Kobon are considered to have more complicated tense/aspect system than Austronesianlanguages (such as Bel) and Tok Pisin (Roberts
1987, Davies 1989).
In this article, section II is a theoretical overview of tense/aspect studies and provides basic
information of the sample languages. Section
III shows the specific data for the past tense
forms of each language and summarizes theircharacteristics. Section IV discusses their morpholog y and semantics, and finally, wesummarize our findings in section V.

THE HIKONE RONSO

2016 autumn / No.409

II

Theoretical backgroundand the languages ofPapua New Guinea

This section introduces several general studies on tense and aspect and then reviews themethod of this study. The most prominent goalof this study is to discuss temporal concepts interms of universal grammar (cf. Sinha et al.
2011, Nose 2016, Velupillai 2016), and specifically, we will try to explain how universal
tendencies relate to past tense and related temporal features. First, we provide a typologicaloverview of previous studies on tense and aspect, and second, we review the previous
studies on the languages of Papua New Guinea.
Tense and aspect are basic and necessary features of verbal structures, and a number ofstudies have been done in this area from typological and theoretical perspectives. The classic
studies of Comrie (1976, 1985) are representative. Subsequently, Bybee and Dahl (1989),
Bybee et al. (1994), and Velupillai (2016) proposed typological approaches to tense/aspect
systems. Sasse (2002) reviewed studies of tense
and aspect up to 2000; the review examined
the studies of aspect from the previous 50 years
and raised several questions for future study.1)
Next, Dahl and Velupillai (2005) revealed
the diversity of past tense forms. Dahl and Velupillai examined past tense forms from 222
languages and classified them morphologically(see Figure 1). Overall, 88 languages lacked pasttense (white squares in Figure 1), a trait particularly observed in Southeast Asia and Africa.
For example, Indonesian is a typical language
without tense, as shown in (1).

Figure 1. The past tense (Dahl and Velupillai 2005)

1) A viewpoint approach by Johanson (2000)). Recently,
Binnick (2012) summarized the general surveys of tense
and aspect as a book in the Oxford Handbook series.

The Forms and Meanings of Past Tense

Masahiko Nose005

(1) Indonesian: Dahl and Velupillai (2005)
Air
itu
dingin.
water
that
cold
“The water is/was cold.”
In contrast, the majority of languages havepast tense features of various kinds. The white
triangles (including almost all European languages) indicate simple binary distinctions
between past and present. Grey triangles andblack circles (observed in the South America
languages Yagua and Chácobo) have several
kinds of past tenses, such as today’s past, yesterday’s past and remote past. The Figure 1 map to
New Guinea Island is shown in detail in Figure
2. Some languages in New Guinea and the
Melanesian region have no past tense (Motu,
Nakanai, Arapesh), simple past (Imonda, Dag a , To k Pi s i n) , o r s e ver a l rem o t en e ss
distinctions (Amele, Kewa, Alamblak).
Amele is marked with a gray triangle in Figure 2, which indicates 2–3 remotenessdistinctions. For Amele, these are today’s past,yesterday’s past, and remote past tense, as
shown in (2).
(2) Amele: (Roberts 1987: 224–225)
Present: Ija fi-gi-na. “I see”
Past: Today’s past: Ija fi-g-a. “I saw (today)”Yesterday’s past: Ija fi-g-an. “I saw (yesterday)”
Remote past: Ija fe-em. “I saw (before yesterday).”
In Figure 2, around 20 languages are marked
around the area, but more than 240 languages
occur only in the Madang Province of Papua
New Guinea. Thus, this study will add to theunderstanding of the past tense in Figure 2 andspecifically, will serve as a pilot study of pasttenses by examining the sample languages:
Amele, Kobon, and Bel, spoken in Madang
Province, and Tok Pisin, spoken across Papua
New Guinea, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 2. The past tense, detail of New Guinea Island (Dahl and Velupillai 2005)006

THE HIKONE RONSO

2016 autumn / No.409

Figure 3. The four sample languages, three of Madang
Province and Tok Pisin (generated by WALS language
viewer)Here, we provide a brief introduction to themorphological characteristics of the languagesof New Guinea (cf. Foley 2000, Aikhenvald2014), followed by a brief overview of each language under discussion.
Generally, New Guinea languages (except
the Toriccelli languages) have complex verbal
morphology (Foley 2000: 376) and their verbal
tense and aspect systems are realized differently(Foley 2000: 381). Foley claimed that Austronesian languages have simple tense systems andoften lack grammatical categories, while in contrast, Trans–New Guinea languages may havecomplex tense systems through multiple deictic
distinctions of distance (see also, Bradshaw andCzodor 2005 and examples from Amele in (2)).
Next, this study provides a brief introductionof the sample languages, Amele, Kobon, Bel,and Tok Pisin. Amele and Kobon are Trans–
New Guinea lang uages characterized bycomplex verbal and nominal morpholog y.
Amele is spoken near the coastal area and was
possibly influenced by contact with several Austronesian languages. In contrast, Kobon isspoken in the highland area and isolated in geographic area. Bel is an Austronesian language
previously called Gedaged/Graged; it is quite

The Forms and Meanings of Past Tense

similar to Takia (Dempwolff n.d. and Ross
2002). Bel seems to have had contact with theTrans–New Guinea languages, since its grammatical features differ from those of typical
Austronesian languages. Finally, Tok Pisin is an
English-based creole spoken throughout Papua
New Guinea. The indigenous languages spoken
in Papua New Guinea are diverse, but Tok Pisin
is the national lingua franca (Mihalic 1971).
This study pays special attention to past tenseor tenses, which differ from unmarked present
tense. Moreover, the previous descriptions of
the sample languages vary in depth and content, making it difficult to compare them
directly. Nevertheless, this study organizes thedata in typological terms and adds additional
data from my fieldwork.

III

Data and observations
on the past tense forms

This section shows the data of the past tense
forms in the sample languages. We utilized thefollowing descriptive grammars: Amele (Roberts 1987 and my field data), Kobon (Davies
1989), Bel (Dempwolff n.d., Ross 2002, and myfield data), and Tok Pisin (Mihalic 1971 and myfield data).
This study focused on the points shown in(3). (3a) and (3b) are morphological features ofthe past tense forms, (3c) and (3d) are semantic
features, and (3d) and (3e) are forms and meanings for perfective aspect.
(3) Past tense and related features in this study:
a. Forms of past tenses
b. Inflections (persons and numbers)c. Meanings of past tenses
d. Semantic contexts for perfective aspect

Masahiko Nose007

e. Morphological perfective aspect
Amele has a present tense and three kinds ofpast tense forms with three remoteness distinctions, as shown in (4). It also has additional
past tense forms, such as habitual and negative
past forms, as in (5). These past tense forms are
realized in the final morphemes of verbal inflections, but their forms are incorporated into
person and number inflections (portmanteau
forms: Roberts 1987: 223). The verbal inflections for present, today’s past, and negative pastin Amele are shown in (6).
(4) Present and past tenses in Amele: (Roberts
1987: 224–225)2)
Present: Ija hu-gi-na. “I come”
Past tenses:
Today’s past: Ija hu-g-a. “I came (today)”Yesterday’s past: Ija hu-g-an. “I came (yesterday)”
Remote past: Ija ho-om. “I came (before yesterday)”(5) Additional past forms in Amele (Roberts
1987: 224–225)
Habitual past: Ija ho-l-ig. “I used to come”
Negative past: Ija qee (not) ho-l-om. “I did notcome”(6) Tense inflections in Amele: (224–245)
Present tense:
1s: hu-gi-na “I come”
2s: ho-go-na “You come”
3s: ho-na “He/she comes”
1d: ho-wo-na “You and I come”
2/3d: ho-si-na “You two come”
1p: ho-go-na “We come”
2/3p: ho-gi-na “You/they come”

3)

Today’s past tense:
1s: hu-g-a “I came (today)”2s: ho-g-a “You came (today)”3s: ho-i-a “He/she came (today)”1d: ho-w-a “You and I came (today)”
2/3d: ho-si-a “You two came (today)”
1p: ho-q-a “We came (today)”
2/3p: ho-ig-a “You/they came (today)”
Negative past tense:
1s: ho-l-om “I did not come”
2s: ho-l-om “You did not come”
3s: ho-l “He/she did not come”
1d: ho-lo-h “You and I did not come”
2/3d: ho-lo-sin “You two did not come”
1p: ho-lo-m “We did not come”
2/3p: ho-l-oin “You/they did not come”
Currently, however, Amele speakers prefer touse universal tense forms in everyday conversation (many such usages are observed in mydata). Roberts (1987: 227) also noted this typeof universal tense, whose meanings including
present and past, as in (7). It is notable that theuniversal tense form -a is the same as the today’s past tense form -a.
(7) Universal tense in Amele:
Ija hug-a. “I come, I came.” (present and past)
While Amele has several kinds of past tense
forms, it has a limited aspect system. Therefore,
perfect/perfective meanings are realized by using the the today’s past tense form (Roberts
1987: 227), or by using the adverbial word wele
“already,” as in (8).
(8) Uqa wele nui-a. “He has already gone.”(Roberts 1987:232)

2) Moreover, Amele has future, relative future, and negative future tenses.
3) Abbreviations: s: singular, d:dual, p:plural, and 1,2,3 :first person, second person, and third person, respectively.

008

THE HIKONE RONSO

2016 autumn / No.409

Kobon is spoken in the Highland area of
Madang Province and has complex morphology. Kobon has two kinds of past tenses: simple
and remote past. Simple past indicates rather
recent situations, while remote past describes
events taking place before the day of utterance(Davies 1989:166–167), as in (9).
(9) Kobon: (Davies 1989: 166–167)
Simple past: Yad au-īn. I have come.
Remote past: Nöŋ-be. “You (2pl) saw.”
According to Davies (1989), Kobon has present, simple past, remote past, future tenses, andperfect aspect, but no habitual past or negative
past like those of Amele. The verbal inflections
in Kobon tense systems are illustrated in (10).
Tense forms are portmanteau suffixes that also
encode person and number. However, in (10),the perfect marker -b- is inserted between theverb-stem and inflection form, as in (11). Thus,
the tense forms are fully inflectional, but aspectforms are simpler.
(10) Tense and aspect inflections in Kobon:
Present Simple past Remote past1s:
ab-in4)
-in
-nö
2s:
ab-ön
-an
-na
3s:
ab-ip
-a
1d :
ab-ul
-ul
-lo
2/3d : ab-il
-il
-lö
1p:
ab-un
-un
-no
2p:
ab-im
-im
-be/-pe
3p:
ab-öl
-al
-la		

1s:
2s:
3s:

Perfect aspect
-b-in
-b-an
-öp

1d:
2/3d:
1p:
2p:
3p:

-b-ul
-b-il
-b-un
-b-im
-b-al

(11) Perfect aspect (Davies 1989: 168):
Um-öb. “He had died.”
Although Kobon has a perfect aspect form,
the past tense forms (simple and remote) imply
perfective meaning as well. In particular, thesimple past forms are often used with perfectaspectual meanings, and the simple past andperfect forms are in many cases interchangeable(Davies 1989: 167). Thus, past tense forms arerich in that they encode remoteness distinctions and imply aspectual meanings. However,Kobon differs from Amele in that it has a simple morphological aspect form.
Bel is an Austronesian language spoken in
the coastal area of Madang Province, neighboring the Amele-speaking area. Bel has almost
the same grammar and lexicon as another Austronesian language, Takia (Ross 2002). Ross
(2002) noted that Takia (and Bel) have experienced long contact with the Trans–New
Guinea languages; consequently, many Austronesian features were lost and Trans–New
Guinea features were acquired. Dempwolff(n.d.) is an old grammatical description of Bel5)and it is thought to have been written between
1930–1940. According to Dempwolff ’s description, the enclitic -lak was a marker of past, past
perfect, and perfect tenses (Dempwolff n.d.:11). Verbs with the enclitic–lak encoded realis
past, past perfect, and prefect meanings as in(12). There is no person/number inflection,
and Ross (2002: 235) described Takia as lacking4) For example, the present verb formations are shown
as g(do)-ab “He is working”, ar(go)-ab-in “I am going.”

5) Dempwolff named it “Graged,” an alternative namefor Bel.

The Forms and Meanings of Past Tense

Masahiko Nose009

tense and distinguishing only realis, irrealis,and imperfective meanings. Thus, the enclitic–lak could be considered to be a realis marker.
(12) a. Am a-god-lak. “we asked for/ we haveasked for / we had asked for”
b. Ad i-du-lak. “the sun had set”
I interviewed several Bel speakers in 2010.
The Bel consultants recognized the enclitic usage of–lak in (12) and (13), but they also clearly
distinguished present, past, and perfective,
with each tense/aspect form having a certain
suffix, as in (13). In contrast, perfective meanings were realized by use of the adverb get“already,” and thus, like Amele (8), Bel employsa lexical perfective.
(13) Bel (my data in 2010):
Present and future: Ƞa ŋar-agoi. “I go (I will)
somewhere.”
Past: Ƞa ŋare-lak. “I went somewhere.”
Perfective: Ƞa get ŋare. “I have already gone.”( get: “already”)(14)Bel (my data in 2010):
Present: Ƞa book mushuti-ŋame. “I read abook.”
Past: Ƞa book mushuti-n. “I read the book.”
In (14), however, the verb “read” shows different inflections from (13). The form “-n” inthe verb “read” represents the past situationand the longer form “-ŋame” indicates the present situation. The form “-n” is not found in
Dempwolff ’s description, so is considered a
newly emerged past tense form. The past verb
form mushuti-n carries the implication “I had

6) According to Bradshaw and Czobor (2005), Jabem(another Austronesian lang uage spoken in Morobe
Province) has the present and the aorist form for tense
system.

010

read the book a long time ago which implies aremote past meaning.6)
The final language in the sample, Tok Pisin,
is the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea andspread across Papua New Guinea during the
19th and 20th centuries. The population of
Papua New Guinea is bilingual in Tok Pisin
and their native languages, such as Amele, Bel,or Kobon. Tok Pisin is an English-based creole
whose grammar is quite simple and that tends
to have isolating morphology. Tense and aspectmarkers are also unbound forms not included
in verb inflection, as in (15).
(15) Tok Pisin:
Past: Mi bin kam long Madang. “I came to
Madang.”Perfective: Mi kam long Madang pinis. “I havecome to Madang.”
In (15), the past tense marker bin is derived
from English “been,” and the perfective marker
pinis originated from English “finish.” Thus, bilingual speakers of the area have grammaticalknowledge of past and perfective through Tok
Pisin grammar.7)
To summarize the observations, Amele hasrich past tenses with tense forms that are incorporated into verbal morphology, but my fielddata found a universal tense indicating bothpresent and past. Kobon has two distinct (simp l e an d rem o te ) p a st tens e s in ver b a lmorphology and has a perfect aspect form as
well. Bel is an Austronesian language withmorphological past forms that encode perfective meanings as well. In Tok Pisin, tense andaspect markers are realized separately. Thesefindings are summarized in Table 1.

7) When I gathered the past tense data in Amele, Amele
speakers freely translated past and perfective sentences
between Amele and Tok Pisin.

THE HIKONE RONSO

2016 autumn / No.409

Table 1. Past tense forms and functions of the sample languages
Amele
Past tense forms Yes(remoteness,

Kobon

Bel

Tok Pisin

Yes

Yes (-lak/-n)

Yes (bin)(simple/remote)(realis marker)

negative, etc.)
Inflections

Rich

Rich

No

No

Meanings

Rich

Rich

Simple (reality)

SimplePerfective

Today’s past

Simple past

Reality meaning

Perfective marker
Independent marker pinis

implication
Perfective

Adverb wele –b– inside the verb

aspect form

“already”

IV

Discussion

The data in section III show that each of thesample languages has at least one past tense
form, but the Trans–New Guinea languages(Amele and Kobon) have remoteness distinctions. Nevertheless, Amele has a diverse tense
system including habitual and negative past as
well as a universal tense, based on the today’s
past form. In contrast, Kobon has a grammaticalized perfect aspect form that forms part ofthe verbal morphology. Bel has a simple tense/
aspect system, but it has a newly acquired pasttense form, and this tense system is determinedby realis meaning. Finally, Tok Pisin has another grammaticalization path that evolved fromEnglish grammar; it has a distinctive one form:
one function tense/aspect system.
This section will discuss two issues. First, thisstudy explores the common features of tense in
Madang Province, and second, we discuss therelationship between past and perfect and theirgrammaticalization path (cf. Aikhenvald 2014).

The Forms and Meanings of Past Tense

Adverb get “already”

When we investigated the nature of the pasttense forms of the sample languages of the
Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, we observed that their past tense behaviors arediverse, with each language having at least one
simple past tense marker. Moreover, the four
languages all have some perfective marker or
usage, but the Trans–New Guinea languages
utilize several tense distinctions based on temporal distance in their markings, while Bel(Austronesian) distinguishes only realis meanings and employs a lexical perfective. Tok Pisin
has both past and perfective markers, and isused as a lingua franca in everyday communication along with the native languages. Thus,
speakers of every language have knowledge ofthe past/perfective distinction through theirknowledge of Tok Pisin. Next, we ask why
Amele and Kobon have several kinds of pasttense forms. The Trans–New Guinea languages
encode several points in a time sequence (Velupillai 2016), but have few distinctions in
aspectual meanings. Austronesian languages,
by contrast, do not mark tense but instead en-

Masahiko Nose011

code clear distinction between realis andirrealis meanings. Each of these features ofthese Trans–New Guinea and Austronesianlanguages was included in the grammars of
their languages at an earlier stage (cf. Foley
2000).
Second, we consider past and perfective interms of grammaticalization. The near past
form in the Trans–New Guinea languages(Amele and Kobon) is a grammaticalization of
the “simple past” with an implication of perfective meaning. The Austronesian language (Bel)acquired its past tense and perfective aspect
meanings by encoding the relationship between events and reality. These tendencies
mean that Trans–New Guinean languages developed the past tense long ago while theAustronesian languages have morphologicallydistinguished realis and irrealis for a long time.
Later contact between the two groups affected
their grammars. Another influence in theselanguages is Tok Pisin, which had another pathto tense and aspect; its use of distinctive tense
and aspect markers influenced the native languages of Papua New Guinea. The relation
between past and perfective found in this study
is shown in (16).
(16) Grammaticalization of past tense and perfective implication8):
Amele, Kobon: near past >>> perfective
Bel: real situation >>> past and perfective aspect
Tok Pisin: past (been>>bin), perfective (finish>>> pinis): independently grammaticalizedV

Conclusion

This study investigated past tenses and related perfective features of four sample languagesof Papua New Guinea. We examined the pasttense in a global context in Figure 1 and foundthat the majority of languages do not havetense form (88 of 222 languages) or have one
single past tense only (94 languages). This
study found that Austronesian languages suchas Bel have a grammatical motivation for distinguishing realis and irrealis, and they havejust one realis form for past and perfective. In
contrast, Trans–New Guinea languages such as
Amele and Kobon have numerous past tense
forms based on near/remote distinctions.
These findings mean that these languages’
grammaticalization paths differ significantly
and the languages themselves are radically different from English and other European
languages. It is also remarkable that Tok Pisin
has distinctive past/perfective forms, in contrast to the native languages. Furthermore,bilingual native speakers of other local languages recognize the distinction between past andperfective in Tok Pisin and successfully translate past/perfective meaning s into eachlanguage.
[Acknowledgement]
I would like to thank Neret Tamo, Nelau Lagia, and the villagers in Sein, Madang Province,
Papua New Guinea for their data and kindness.
I claim sole responsibility for any errors. This
work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI
Grant Number 15K02478. An earlier version ofthis paper was presented at The Seventh International Conference on Language, Culture andMind, Hunan University, Changsha, 1–4, 2016.

8) Chris Sinha (personal communication) suggested
that Amondawa in South America has a similar situation. Sinha et al.’s (2011) remarkable paper shows that
there are few concepts of time in Amondawa, which has
a limited and simple tense and aspect system as well.
Moreover, the lingua franca there, Portuguese, plays thesame role in Tok Pisin in New Guinea.

012

THE HIKONE RONSO

2016 autumn / No.409

I am grateful to Chris Sinha, Vera Sinha, Enrique Bernardez Snashis and Zhaoyang Ai for
their comments and criticisms of earlier versions of the paper.

⦿ Velupillai, V. 2016. Partitioning the time: a cross-lin-

guistic survey of tense. Studies in Language 40: 93–136.

References
Aikhenvald,
A. Y. 2014. The art of grammar: a practical⦿
guide. Oxford University Press.
⦿ Binnick, R. I. 2012. The Oxford handbook of tense andaspect. Oxford University Press.

⦿ Bradshaw, J., & Czobor, F. 2005. Otto Dempwolf f ’s

grammar of the Jabêm language in New Guinea. University of Hawai’i Press.

⦿Bybee, J, R. and Ö. Dahl. 1989. The creation of tense andaspect systems. Studies in Language 13: 51–103.

⦿ Bybee, J, R. Perkins, and W. Pagliuca. 1994. The evolu-tion of grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. University of Chicago Press.

⦿Comrie, B. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge University Press.
⦿Comrie, B. 1985. Tense. Cambridge University Press.
⦿ Dahl, Ö. and V. Velupillai. 2005. The past tense, In:

Haspelmath, M. et al.(eds.). The World Atlas of Language Structures, Oxford University Press, WALS feature #66: 270–273.

⦿Davies, J. 1989. Kobon. Routledge.
⦿ Dempwolff, O. n.d. Grammar of Gedaged language.

Mimeo. Narer, Karkar Island: Lutheran Mission.

⦿ Foley, W. A. 2000. The languages of New Guinea. An-

nual review of anthropology, 357–404.

⦿ Johanson, L. 2000. Viewpoint operators in European

languages. Empirical Approaches to Language Typology
6: 27–188.

⦿Mihalic, F. 1971. The Jacaranda dictionary and grammarof Melanesian Pidgin. Hong Kong: Jacaranda.

⦿Nose, M. 2016. Borrowing temporal expressions in New

Guinea languages: a contrastive study of loanwords. Tohoku Studies in Linguistics 24: 95–104.

⦿Roberts, J. R. 1987. Amele. Croom Helm.
⦿Ross, M. 2002. Takia. The Oceanic languages, 216–248.
⦿ Sasse, H. J. (2002). Recent activity in the theory of as-

pect: Accomplishments, achievements, or just non-progressive state. Linguistic Typology, 6, 199–271.

⦿ Sinha, Ch. et al. 2011. When Time is not Space: The so-cial and linguistic construction of time intervals andtemporal event relations in an Amazonian culture. Language and Cognition 3:137–169.

The Forms and Meanings of Past Tense

Masahiko Nose

013

The Forms and Meanings of Past Tense
A Contrastive Study of Papua New Guinea

Masahiko Nose

This study clarifies the functions of tense
forms in the Madang Province, Papua New
Guinea; particularly, the past tense forms in
the following four languages: Amele, Bel, Kobon, and Tok Pisin. Amele and Kobon areTrans–New Guinea languages, which arrived
in New Guinea Island 30,000–50,000 years
ago. Bel is an Austronesian language. The people brought their language to the Island bycanoes, 5,000–7,000 years ago. Tok Pisin, an
English-based creole, was born in the 19th century because of the slave trade in the South
Pacific. Tok Pisin is now the lingua franca in
Papua New Guinea and people there are bilingual in Tok Pisin and each native language.
This is a contrastive study of the languages ofMadang Province, and this study tries to explore the tense-aspect features of this area andexplains them in functional terms (Bybee et al.
1994). Moreover, this study adds a discussion
on how grammar deals with time (Sinha et al.
2011), particularly past tense and perfective aspect.
When we investigated the nature of pasttense forms of sample languages, we observedthat the past tense behaviors of the sample languages are diverse, and we can indicate that
there is at least one simple past tense marker ineach language. Moreover, the four languages
have either a perfective marker or usage, but
Trans–New Guinea utilizes the near past tense
marker, and in contrast, Bel (Austronesian) has

014

only a realis marker or lexical perfective usage.
Finally, Tok Pisin has both past and perfective
markers independently. People in the area use
Tok Pisin as a lingua franca and they haveknowledge of the distinction between themeanings of the past and perfective forms.
Nevertheless, this study claims that past tenseis one of the basic and necessary features inTrans–New Guinea languages, whereas it is not
an important feature in Austronesian languages.

THE HIKONE RONSO

2016 autumn / No.409

The Forms and Meanings of Past Tense

Masahiko Nose015