A Grammar of Turkish Sign Language (TİD)

In TİD, there is no morphological tense inflection on verbs [Morphology – 3.2.2.]. Rather, the time of the event or state is generally expressed by temporal adverbials such as yesterday, tomorrow, today, now, later, or by tense markers. ın_the_past and ın_the_future can be considered as tense markers. 

 

     

        ın_the_past                                                                           ın_the_future

 (Karabüklü 2016: 45-46) 

 

These two markers are not articulated in the central signing space but on the basic time line which is an imaginary line along the saggital axis [Pragmatics – 8.2.]. On this timeline, the shoulder or neutral position represents present, frontal signing area future, and back of the body past. Moreover, in the articulation of these signs, an arc movement is used rather than pointing to an exact point in the back or front in the horizontal plane.

 

Signs expressing the temporal notions "far future", "near future", "near past", and "far past" also exist. The mapping between the meaning of the sign and its articulation is iconic in that the distance in the signed time line corresponds to distance in time [Pragmatics – 8.2.].

 

 

 far_future

 

near_future

 

 

 

near_past

 

 

 

far_past