Language/Wolof/Grammar/Conjugation

Conjugation with respect to aspect instead of tense

In Wolof, tenses like present tense, past tense, and future tense are just of secondary importance, they even play almost no role. Of crucial importance is the aspect of an action from the speaker's point of view. The most important distinction is whether an action is perfective, i.e., finished, or imperfective, i.e., still going on, from the speaker's point of view, regardless whether the action itself takes place in the past, present, or future. Other aspects indicate whether an action takes place regularly, whether an action will take place for sure, and whether an action wants to emphasize the role of the subject, predicate, or object of the sentence. As a result, conjugation is not done by tenses, but by aspects. Nevertheless, the terms “present, past, future, habitual …” will be used in this manual to make it more accessible to volunteers, although aspect pronoun might be a better term.

Example: The verb dem means "to go"; the temporal pronoun naa means "I already/definitely", the temporal pronoun dinaa means "I am soon / I will / I will be soon"; the temporal pronoun damay means "I (am) regularly/usually". Now the following sentences can be constructed: Dem naa. "I go already / I have already gone." - Dinaa dem. "I will go soon / I am just going to go." - Damay dem. "I usually/regularly/normally go."

If the speaker absolutely wants to express that an action took place in the past, this is not done by conjugation, but by adding the suffix -(w)oon to the verb, mainly the Language/Wolof/Grammar/Static-verbs static verbs. (Please bear in mind that in a sentence the temporal pronoun is still used in a conjugated form along with the past marker.)

Example: Bëggoon naa dem Ndakaaru. "I wanted to go to Dakar."

Source : http://publish.illinois.edu/wolof201fall14/files/2014/08/NEW_WOLOF_BOOK.pdf