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What is the etymology of Chinese tense words?

Chinese Language Asked by Guset on December 21, 2021

So according to Wikipedia and other sources, Chinese was a tenseless language. It has aspects and moods that refer to time frames, but not tense itself.

This suggests to me that the nouns expressing concept of tense — past (过去), present (现在), future (未来) — are words imported from English and other European languages, and hence are new words.

Most likely, per the history of modernization, the Japanese first used those words to refer to specific tenses, which the Chinese imported in the 1900s.

Is this true? Or did the Chinese have words referring to specific tenses while not explicitly having a tense concept played out in their language?

One Answer

According to Wikipedia, the first Chinese's grammar《馬氏文通》is written by 馬建忠 in 1898, meaning that most likely, there was no use at all of 過去式、現在式 and 未來式 before that. Now, if we investigate a bit by searching the tenses we are interested in, we can quote:

記時之式有四:一,事成之時;二,既往之時;三,幾時之久;四,未來之時。凡此四時,類無介字為先,故亦列於賓次。

In my understanding, this states the existence of three tenses corresponding to the perfect, the past and the future.

Answered by Firmin Martin on December 21, 2021

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