3. MORPHOLOGY
The habitual past tense represents an act habitually done in the past.
- vah hmaoSaa maohnat krtaa qaa.
vah hameša: mehnat karta: tha:.
he always hard work do-hab be-past
He always used to work hard.
The past perfect tense represents an action completed in the past or
before a certain past time.
- Amar prsaaoM savaoro Aayaa qaa.
amar parsõ savere a:ya: tha:.
Amar day before yesterday morning-obl came be-past
Amar had come the day before yesterday in the morning.
3.4.4. Aspect
Verbal forms indicating one of these aspects are specified for one of
the four tenses: present, past, presumptive, and subjunctive. The
combination of one of the three aspects with the four different tenses
results in the production of various aspectual-tenses: present-
habitual, past-habitual, presumptive-habitual, subjunctive-habitual,
present-progressive, past-progressive, presumptive-progressive,
subjunctive-progressive, present-perfective, past-perfective,
presumptive-perfective, and subjunctive-perfective. It also permits
the simple-perfective form. Besides these aspectual verb forms,
some non-aspectual verb forms of Hindi are the future, root
subjunctive, and the imperative and infinitive forms. They will be
discussed separately.
3.4.4.1. Habitual Aspect
The habitual aspectual-tenses are formed by adding the following
suffixes to the verb stems agreeing with the subject in gender and
number:
Masculine Feminine
Sg Pl Sg / Pl
- ta -ta: -to -te -tI -ti: