Tenses
Arcadia distinguishes between four verb tenses:
- One timeless tense (not bound by chronological time)
- Three timed tenses (anchored in past, present, or future)
Tense indicates the temporal framework of a verb's action or state. Aspect, however, is handled separately via aspectual modifiers and is not embedded in the tense suffix.
Tense is marked by vowel-based suffixes, which are appended to the verb stem after the -ir infinitive ending is dropped, and before the person-number suffix.
Timeless Tenses
Arcadia has one timeless tense, veritas, that captures states that aren't bound by time.
| Tense | Suffix | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Veritas | -u |
eternal statements, unaffected by time |
As such veritas is a tense used to describe universal truths and scientific facts.
Timed Tenses
Timed tenses are tied to a specific temporal frame.
| Tense | Suffix | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Present | -a |
current action/state |
| Past | -i |
completed or prior action |
| Future | -o |
anticipated or projected action |
These suffixes are placed after the stem and before the mood suffix.
The best way to understand which tense to use is to consider the viewpoint. The viewpoint is the temporal perspective from which the action or state is considered. If the viewpoint is entirely in the past, the past tense is used. If the viewpoint is entirely in the future, the future tense is used. Otherwise, the present tense is used.
To illustrate this, consider the following sentence: "Every morning, I go to work." The viewpoint is my current life pattern, which is ongoing and includes the present moment. The viewpoint can have specifiers, for example, "Every morning" specifies the time frame of the action, but the viewpoint is always a continuum.
Examples
save→ it issive→ it wassove→ it will besuve→ it was, it is, and it will be