International Journal of Language & Linguistics

Tense Context across Kikongo Varieties in the Democratic Republic of Congo with Reference To English
Nsimambote Zola Remy

Abstract
The current paper has examined the tense context across Kikongo varieties in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It has been disclosed that all the English tenses are contextualized across Kikongo varieties. Three types of past are identified in Kikongo basing on their contexts, namely a very recent past, recent past or non-narrative past and narrative past. The English present progressive tense is morphologically similar to the Kikongo one. It is topicalized in Kindibu (a variety of Kikongo among others). The past perfect tense in Kikongo is expressed thanks to lexicalization. A context of the future of the future, a tense that does not exist in English, is identified in Kikongo.

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