Verbs in the Past

Earlier, I covered how to use verbs in the "present", or what linguists call the "imperfective." This means that you already know how to say things like "I go" or "We study Bambara."

But what happens if we want to say "I went" or "We studied Bambara"? In these cases, we need to learn how to use verbs in the "past tense" or what linguists call the "perfective aspect."

In this chapter, I'll cover the following:

• reminder of how to make sentences with verbs
• transitive constructions in the affirmative (e.g., "I studied Bambara")
• transitive constructions in the negative (e.g., "I didn't study Bambara")
• intransitive constructions in the affirmative (e.g., "I went")
• intransitive constructions in the negative (e.g., "I didn't go")
• recap of Bambara verbs in the "past" and "present"

Reminder of verbal structure

Remember from earlier that sentences with verbs have a structure like the following:

N bɛ taa.
I + PRESENT + go

'I go.'

Or, if we wanted to make things negative and have a sentence with a direct object:

An tɛ julakan faamu.
we + PRESENT.NEG + Jula + understand

'We don't understand Jula.'

So underlyingly, we have a structure like this:

SUBJECT + PREDICATE MARKER + (DIRECT OBJECT) + VERB

Remember that predicate marker is just the fancy linguistic term for the auxiliaries (AUX) or "helper words", bɛ and tɛ, that allows us to use a particular verb in the "present."

Let's keep this structure in mind; it will mostly hold for verbal sentences. Though, as you'll see, there is one major exception.

Positive transitive constructions

Taking a transitive sentence—that is, one with a direct object—and putting it into the past is very straightforward. For instance, we can take a sentence like the following:

N bɛ cɛkɔrɔba fo.
I AUX elder.man greet

'I greet the elder man'

To make it "perfective", we simply need to change bɛ to its past equivalent ye:

N ye cɛkɔrɔba fo.

'I greeted the elder man.'

(or, 'I have greeted the elder man.')

Conveniently, this "past tense" using ye and all the forms that follow in this video cover two things: what English grammarians call the past (e.g., "I greeted the man") and the present perfect (e.g., "I have greeted the man").

There is no need to make this distinction when speaking in Bambara! The context will make the meaning clear.

Negative transitive constructions

In the case of negative sentences, the underlying process is the same. For example, take a sentence like:

U tɛ faransikan kalan.

'They don't study French.'

(Note that kalan can also mean 'to read'.)

To make it negative, we simply change the predicate marker tɛ to it past equivalent ma:

U ma faransikan kalan.

'They didn't study French.'

(or, 'They haven't studied French.)

Also, note that this verbal negative predicate marker ma looks like the negative predicate marker man that is used with qualitative verbs, but they are not the same. The former is written without n and the latter with n. You can see the difference in an example like this:

I ma bamanankan kalan. O man ɲi.

'You didn't study Bambara. That's not good.'

Positive intransitive constructions

When it comes to intransitive verbs and sentences, things will get slightly more complicated. This is because there is an exception to the SUJ + AUX + (object) + VERB structure that I laid out earlier.

For starters, let's take an imperfective intransitive sentence like the following:

N bɛ taa.
I AUX go

'I go/leave.'

To make this sentence "perfective" (that is, to put it into the "past"), we do something quite different. Instead of changing the predicate marker bɛ, we actually drop it from the sentence and instead add the perfective suffix -ra to the verb:

N taara.

'I went/left.'

(or, 'I have gone/left.')

Let's look at another example so that things are clear. We start with a "present tense" sentence like:

U bɛ bɔ.
they AUX exit

'They exit.'

(Or, 'They go out.')

To make it perfective, it changes like so:

U bɔra.

'They exited.'

(Or, 'They went out.')

It's important to note that this intransitive perfective suffix can actually take one of three forms depending on the sounds of the verb that precede it: -ra, -la, or -na.

For instance, if the consonant that precedes it is a nasal sound like n, m or ɲ then the suffix itself becomes nasalized:

N bɛ na ➜ N nana
'I come' ➜ 'I came'

(And not N nara because of the first letter of the verb na ['to come'], which is N)

Alternatively, if the consonant that precedes it is a liquid (that is, an L or an R) than the suffix will appear as -la:

N bɛ wuli ➜ N wulila
'I get up' ➜ 'I got up'

Or:

Kolo bɛ kari ➜ Kolo karila
'The bone breaks' ➜ 'The bone broke'

If you run into some variability, don't get thrown off. You may hear one person say N sɛgɛnna while another says N sɛgɛra for 'I have tired' (as in, 'I am tired'). Personal and regional differences such as these are similar to the way that some Americans say "roof" and others "ruff" for the thing on top of a house.

What's important for you is to know that underlyingly -ra/la/na is one suffix that signals the "past tense" for an intransitive verb and to get comfortable recognizing and using it.

Negative intransitive constructions

The -ra/la/na exception does not apply to negative intransitive constructions; we follow the regular verbal sentence structure of SUJ + AUX + VERB. For instance, let's take a negative intransitive sentence in the "present" such as:

N tɛ taa.
I AUX.NEG go

'I don't go.'

If we want to put this sentence into the "past" then we follow the same procedure that we did earlier with transitive constructions; tɛ will be switched to its perfective equivalent ma:

N ma taa.

'I didn't go.'

Recap

Now that I've walked us through all the different forms related to verbs in the "past", let's do a general take-away about using verbs in the past and present.

The verbal structure of a Bambara (and, in general, Manding) sentence is as follows:

SUBJECT + AUX + (OBJECT) + VERB

Depending on how you want to use a verb—in the "present" (imperfective), the "past" (perfective), positively, or negative—you will change the auxiliary (AUX) or "predicate marker" (e.g., bɛ, tɛ, ye, ma) that appears following the subject.

The exception to this is intransitive verbs when used positively in the "past", where instead of an auxiliary, we attach a suffix (-ra/la/na) to the verb.

You can visualize this dynamic in a table like this:

	SUBJECT	AUX	(OBJECT)	VERB
Present		bɛ/tɛ
Past - trans.		ye/ma
Past - intrans. pos.				-ra/la/na
Past - intrans. neg.		ma

Summary

Ayiwa! We covered the following in this chapter:

• The affirmative past of transitive verbs is formed using the predicate marker ye:

  N ye ji min.
  'I drank water.'

• The affirmative past of intransitive verbs is formed with the suffix -ra/la/na:

  N taara.
  'I went.'

• The negative past of transitive AND intransitive verbs is formed with ma:

  N ma ji min.
  'I didn't drink water.'

  N ma taa.
  'I didn't go.'