Bantu languages are well-known for their complex tense systems encoding multiple degrees of remoteness. Two assumptions underlie most approaches to analysis of such systems: (1) that linguistic time is optimally construed as a unidimensional expanse, whereby multi-tense systems carve up the timeline in regular progressive intervals away from the speech event; and (2) that tense markers quintessentially exhibit no overlap in denoting reference along this expanse. In this paper, the authors propose a different approach to understanding Bantu tense systems which treats linguistic time—from the perspective of Ego (the conceptualizer)—as a multi-dimensional array comprising cognitively dissociated temporal worlds, or domains, temporally linked and grounded in the deictic dichotomy between events construed as occurring in a contemporal world of the “present” versus those situated in cognitively dissociated domains. That is, tense markers function to situate events in one of two distinct conceptual types of domain that correlate with different construals of time: Ego-moving or moving-time. Support comes from a variety of curious facts found in Bantu languages. A key element of this approach is that it provides an explanation for why temporal overlap of tenses does, indeed, occur, and advances the position that there are conceptually different pasts and futures.
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