2Fut: Imperfective and perfective forms are used to express distinct future tenses.
person | singular | plural | |
1. | tot-ēγ-ǝm | tot-ew | |
present | 2. | tot-ēγ-ǝn | tot-ēγ-ǝn |
3. | tot-i | tot-ēγ-ǝt |
Table No. 1. Verb ‘take’ in indeterminate conjugation (present tense) (cf. Kálmán 1976)
person | singular | plural | |
1. | ōluŋkwe pat-ǝγ-ǝm | ōluŋkwe pat-ēw | |
future | 2. | ōluŋkwe pat-ǝγ-ǝn | ōluŋkwe pat-ēγ-ǝn |
3. | ōluŋkwe pat-i | ōluŋkwe pat-ēγ-ǝt |
Table No. 2 . Verb ‘be’ in indeterminate conjugation (future tense) (cf. Gerasimova 2009)
person | singular | plural | |
1. | ūnt-ēγ-ǝm taχ | ūnt-ew taχ | |
future | 2. | ūnt-ēγ-ǝn taχ | ūnt-ēγ-ǝn taχ |
3. | ūnt-i taχ | ūnt-ēγ-ǝt taχ |
Table No. 3. Verb ’sit’ in indeterminate conjugation (future tense) (cf. Rombandeeva 1973)
In Northern Mansi, future tense can be coded with three constructions, all of which are periphrastic. It can be expressed by 1) the present tense of the verb and an adverbial, 2) an auxiliary construction, which contains the infinitive of the main verb and the conjugated present tense form of the pati ‘fall, start’ auxiliary (cf. table 1 and 2), or 3) the combination of tajaχ ‘after’ and the present tense form of the verb (table 3) (cf. Rombandeeva 1973: 125, Riese 2001: 45). The grammaticalization in the last construction is evident from the fact that taχ is a modified form of tajaχ and it is used with a fixed word order (it always comes after the verb).
The topic requires further research, but on the bases of the articles that appeared in the Northern Mansi newspaper called Lūimā Sēripos between January 2014 and September 2015, the construction with the auxiliary pati ‘fall, start’ tends to express imperfective future, while the other two constructions code perfective future tense.