Chichewa (also but less commonly known as Chinyanja, Chewa or Nyanja) is the main lingua franca of central and southern Malawi and neighbouring regions.
A perfect tense is one which carries an implication that the result of a past action still holds at the present time, for example "he has come (and is still here)".
Compound tenses are also found in Chichewa to express more complex meanings, such as ndimatí ndipité "I was about to go" or ndakhala ndíkúpíta "I have been going".
The Present Simple in most verbs has a near future meaning: Hyphens and tonal accent marks have been added for clarity, although they are not used in standard Chichewa orthography.
The second way in which one tense is distinguished from another in Chichewa is in the use of tones, that is, in the rise and fall in pitch of the speaker's voice.
Mchombo gives this example:[17] Downing and Mtenje call this aspect the "continuative", and write the infix as -báa.
As one scholar Jack Mapanje puts it: "Although traditional and other grammarians have latched on to the idea of immediate, near or remote past or future time, this is not a hard and fast rule for our languages.
It can also be used, as in English, for events which are already planned, e.g. "I'm going to Zambia next week" or which are still incompleted but under way:[33] This tense is used in a wider range of contexts than the English equivalent, since it is also often used with stative verbs such as "know", "want", "remember", "believe", "expect", "think", "see":[34] It is also used for performative verbs, such as ndikulónjeza "I promise", although some older speakers use the Present Simple in such contexts.
However, this is not necessarily the case in all languages; in Spanish, for example, the Perfect is compatible with an adverb such as ayer "yesterday".
The Perfect tense of the verb -khala ("stay" or "be") either by itself or combined with another verb is used as the equivalent of the English Perfect Continuous to express a situation which began some time ago but which is still continuing now: The construction using forms such as takhala tíkúgíra is not mentioned in any of the early writers on Chichewa grammar and so is perhaps a recent development in Chichewa.
[54] The relative clause intonation of the Perfect Simple has a tone on the first syllable (which may link or spread) and another on the penultimate (which may shift).
[60] Since the first President of Malawi, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, wished to standardise the language and to make the Central Region variety the basis of that standard, -da- was chosen as the correct form to be used in written Chichewa for this tense.
Banda is said to have declared: "The real Chichewa is what is spoken by the villagers in Dowa, Lilongwe, Dedza, Salima; in the Southern Region, Namkumba's area in Fort Johnston.
"[61] Thus -da- has come to be used as the standard form in written Chichewa, and books describing the language for Malawian schools allow only -da- as the Remote Perfect tense-marker.
In this usage, it has the meaning of a simple past tense, and the implication that the result of the action still holds does not apply.
Maxson characterises this tense as follows: "The sense sometimes seems to be that the action will take place in relation to or dependent on something else.
The tones are on the initial and penultimate syllables: The Present Potential is made with the tense-marker -nga- and the final vowel -e-.
It can be translated "can", "could", "may", or "might":[129] The negative has tones on the tense-marker and penultimate: sindingáthandíze "I can't help"; there is an alternative pronunciation: síndíngathandíze.
The negative of this tense is expressed not with -zí- but by adding -má- to the negative subjunctive: Another kind of subjunctive, much less common than the two described above, is a tense with the aspect-marker -ba- (pronounced -báa-, with a second tone on the penultimate)[149] which means "let's do it while waiting for something else to happen":[106][150] It seems possible that -ba- has developed by contraction from the construction yamba "begin" plus the perfect participle described above.
Unlike the more common participial -ta-, there is no tone on the first syllable: These same three prefixes, zi-, ba-, and ta- can also be added to the imperative, with similar meanings (see below).
In this case the final vowel is always -a and there is a tone on the syllable after -ngo-: Like the Subjunctive, the Imperative can have the prefixes ta- (derived from the auxiliary verb chita "do" plus the infinitive), ba- "meanwhile", and zi- (imperfective).
The final vowel of the negative subjunctive is usually -e:[158] The Infinitive is formed with the prefix ku-, which is proclitic, that is, it puts a tone on the syllable following itself: kuthándiza "to help".
-má- can also be added in sentences like the following that describe an event which takes place gradually: Another idiomatic use of the Infinitive is to represent the second of two verbs in the same tense which have the same subject.
[162] The word ndí is often shortened to ń: There was formerly another idiom of using the prefix na-, ni- or nu- (depending on the class concord) to represent the second of two past or perfect tenses; however, it is not much used in modern Chichewa: Sometimes the Infinitive can be used as a tense in its own right, to create a vivid description:[164] The Infinitive can also follow the preposition pa "on", which combines with ku to make po- (with a low tone):[167] The Infinitive is frequently combined with á "of" to make a verbal adjective or adverb.
It can be a command: At other times it is an adverb: It can also be a noun: The word ósatí (from the irregular verb -ti "say") is frequently used to mean "not":[176] These tenses occur only in dependent clauses.
[181] In this case there is also a tone on the initial syllable: A frequent use is in the phrase pákádalí pano "at the present time" (lit.
However, sometimes if -khala is used, the reference can be to a hypothetical situation in the present: The main clause in a hypothetical conditional can also be expressed using the word bwenzi "it would be the case that" followed by a participial tense: The negative is sí bwenzi: In some varieties of Chichewa the tense-marker -chi- can be used in the "if" clause in hypothetical conditional sentences referring to present time instead of -kada-:[212][214] The form achikhala (kutí) or chikhala kutí can mean "if" in a hypothetical conditional: The words bwenzi and síbwenzi followed by a participial tense can be used in the main clause instead of -kada-: The use of -chi- in a counterfactual conditional is found in Johannes Rebmann's Dictionary of the Kiniassa Language (entry "Pfomera"), written in the 1850s, in the sentence: ine nikidsiwa, sikapfomerera (modern spelling: ine ndichidziwa, si(ndi)ka(da)vomerera), which he translates: "If I had known it, I should not have assented".
The n in these combinations is homorganic, but (unlike in words such as njóka 'snake') syllabic:[222] The w part of a labialised consonant disappears before o and u: Ndi can have pronominal endings attached to it, e.g. ndine "I am", ndiwe "you are".
It can refer to a situation which later changed: It is also often used in story-telling: Often the pronunciation ndináli is heard, apparently with the same meaning as ndí-naa-lí:[231] The Persistive has a tone on the final syllable: ndikadalí (ndikalí) "I am still".
It can be singular or plural: A persistive participial form ndíkádalí (or ndíkalí) also exists meaning "while I am still" or "while I was still": For the infinitive, imperative, subjunctive, and all other tenses of "to be", the verb -khala ("sit" or "stay") is used:[237] Imperative: Infinitive: Present Subjunctive: Present Habitual: Near Future: Remote Future: Perfect: Counterfactual conditional: Past Potential: When -khala is used with the infix -dá-, it can mean "happen" or "become": Compound tenses are also found in Chichewa.