This is part of the Zevy grammar notes
In the previous section, we saw how Zevy handles sentences such as "I am" and "You are". In this section, we'll see how to add time to the equation with other simple verbs.
Let's take a look at an example:
The child played.
Colorizing this, we have:
(1) Daad hi ti tattiis.
The child played.
Recall that Zevy does not have articles, and that the default word order is object-verb-subject. So, articles like "the" are inferred rather than explicit, and the subject tatiis "child" appears at the end. But how does daad hi ti translate to "played"?
To dig into this, let's look at the same sentence in the present tense. Take a look at example (2) below. Note how the structure of the sentence is parallel to one we saw in the previous section, which we show as example (3):
(2) Daad hi me tattiis.
The child is playing.
(3) Dut hi me koru.
The window is in the house.
In fact, the underlying structure of the sentences is identical. What's happening is this: in Zevy, relationships in time are conveyed with the same postpositions as relationships in space. This extends to how Zevy verbs mark tense.
The present tense is conveyed to being "in" an action:
(2) Daad hi me tattiis.
The child is in playing. → The child is playing.
(3) Dut hi me koru.
The window is in the house.
The past tense is conveyed as motion "from" an action. This brings us back to our original example:
(1) Daad hi ti tattiis.
The child is from playing. → The child played.
And the future tense is conveyed as motion "to" an action:
(4) Daad hi te tattiis.
The child is to playing. → The child will play.
This structure is the core of how Zevy verbs mark tense. To recap, the steps are to: