Lojban Grammar - Syntax and Semantics - Cmavo - Tenses

Tenses

Lojban has 63 unique tense words to express various aspects of both space and time as well as event (such a system is unusual among other languages in that it deals with spatial and temporal aspects in the same term). They can be roughly subdivided as follows:

• intervals: pu, ca, ba, bu'u, ri'u, ni'a ...
• modifiers: ze'i, zi, ve'i, vi ...
• contours: co'a, pu'o, de'a ...
• converters: fe'e, roi, mo'i ...

Marking tenses is always optional in Lojban:

mi klama le zarci (default: no temporal tense)
I went/have-gone/go/am-going/will-go/continually-go-to the-market.

mi ba'o klama le zarci
I have-gone-to the-market.

mi capu'o klama le zarci
I am-about-going-to the-market.

Where the tense information is not specified, the context resolves the interpretation.

Tense words are usually put right before the selbri:

mi pu klama le zarci (cu is the implicit separator between the first sumti mi and the selbri klama.)

They may be placed elsewhere with the additional terminator ku:

pu ku mi klama le zarci

mi klama pu ku le zarci

mi klama le zarci pu (ku is elidable at the end of the bridi)

The terminator is used so that the tense word do not directly run into the following sumti and modify it. Compare the next sentences:

baku le nunsalci cu cfari
the festival will start.

ba le nunsalci cu cfari
After the festival, will start.

Tenses can be "layered up":

mi pu klama le zdani .i le zdani pupu se daspo
I go-to the house. The house be-destroyed.
I went to the house. The house had been destroyed.

Tenses can be "sticky" by being set with ki, continuing in effect over more than a single bridi, until it is unset:

mi puki fengu binxo .i le nixli cu klaku cfari .i mi ki xenru
I - angry-kind-of become. The girl crying-kind-of start. I regret.
(Earlier) I got angry. The girl started crying. (Now) I regret.

The second ki resets the tense to the implicit default time from the speaker's point of view, which is "now" (this means that ki may be used as a tense word by itself).

Using ki, equivalents of the previous layering tenses can be produced:

mi puki klama le zdani .i le zdani pu se daspo

The second pu is to be counted from the tense set by the last ki, so in effect it is equivalent to pupu.