LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 14:1 January 2014
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Inflectional Processes of Tense and Aspect in Bodo

Daimalu Brahma, M.A., Ph.D. Scholar

Abstract

The Bodos are living in different parts of Assam for centuries. They speak a language called Bodo that belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family of languages and it is one of the Associate state languages in Assam. It is a recognized language in the 8th Schedule of Indian constitution.

Tense and Aspects are the grammatical categories, used in the grammatical description of verbs. Tense refers to the absolute location of event or action in time, e.g., past, present or future. And aspect refers to how an action or event is to be viewed with respect to time; it expresses actual location in time. The present paper is an attempt to look into the inflectional processes of the tense and aspect of Bodo. The paper will discuss the use of various types of Tense and Aspect markers found in Bodo.

Bodo uses mainly three type of tenses, viz., Past, Present and Future. Past and future have separate tense markers, but present tense has no separate tense marker in this language. The past tense marker is {-m?n} and the future is {-g?n}. The present tense is used in the verbs as unmarked. There are four types of aspects found in this language, namely, Habitual, Progressive, Perfective and Perfect. The inflectional processes are ‘verb + aspect’, ‘verb + aspect + tense’, ‘verb + tense’ and ‘noun + tense’, etc. It is hoped that this analysis of tense and aspect in Bodo will help us in understanding tense and aspect in Bodo.

1. Introduction

Bodo is the name of a language as well as community. It is a major tribe of North-eastern India and it belongs to the Tibeto-Burman language family. According to P. C. Bhattacharya (1977) “the ‘Bodo’ word is first applied by Hodgson”. The Bodo is known as Bodo or Boro, Kachary, Kirata, Mech, etc., in different places and different times. In course of time they came to be known simply as Bodo or Boro. In the Constitution of India, the language is recognized as Bodo. The Bodo speakers are mainly found in the Kokrajhar, Baksa, Chirang, Udalgury, Kamrup, Goalpara, Karbianglong, and Dhemazi districts of Assam as well as in some adjacent areas of West Bengal, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Daimalu Brahma, M.A., Ph.D. Scholar
Department of Linguistics
Assam University
Silchar 788011
Assam
India
daimalubrahma85@gmail.com
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