A critique of ‘A re-evaluation of tense in isiZulu’

This article is a response to Groenewald’s 2014 article, ‘A re-evaluation of tense in isiZulu’. Sub-themes identified in Groenewald’s article and explored in this exposé in the light of an array of recently published research on the topic of tense are: the suitability of the distinction between absolute and relative tense and the use of the term ‘absolute tense’; the appropriateness of defining tense in terms of deixis; the remoteness distinctions in terms of past and future tenses generally distinguished in the Bantu languages with particular reference to isiZulu; the semantic significance of the use of the so-called short and long forms of the present and past tenses of isiZulu and the naming of the individual tenses.