2097: Temporal Morphology in Somali Nouns Sep 11, 2020

People will probably be familiar with 'tense' as a concept relating to verbs; even words that explicitly relate to time like the adverb 'before' and the noun 'yesterday' don't have tense because they don't change to indicate time in the way that "I swim" does compared to "I swam". In Somali, it is definitely possible for nouns and adjective, and even some other parts of speech like articles and adverbs to change due to tense. For instance, notice the vowels at the end of the nouns in:

A) dhibaatóoyinka adag ee ká tagaan Soomáaliya

problems(-detM) difficult and (abl) arise Somalia

"The serious problems that arise in Somalia”

B) dhibaatóoyinkii adaa ee ká tagaa Soomáaliya

problems(-detM) difficult [+past] and (abl) arose [+past] Somalia

"The serious problems that arose in Somalia”