On the tense-aspect system of standard Thai*

This article deals with the rich inventory of forms expressing various aspectual and temporal meanings in Standard Thai (or Siamese). The author examines a range of postverb auxiliaries which express the aspectuality (Aktionsart + aspect). As to tense markers, they are rather “temporal-modals” and therefore belong to the preverbal domain. It is argued that in Thai the grammatical tense is non-linear and that the aspectuality concerns either the duration or non duration of the process or its completion or incompletion with respect to the time of utterance.