Description and Categorization of Balti Tense Markers

The current study aims at describing and categorizing the possible tense markers of Balti language, spoken in the Baltistan region of Gilgit-Baltistan. As for linguistics exposure is concerned, Balti is one of the less explored languages. Balti has a handful amount of traditional pieces of literature in the form of books (Traditional Grammars, stories, and history) and even the available Balti literature have not been documented within the proper paradigm of linguistics. To conduct this particular study, 200 Balti root words (verbs) have been collected from the corpus data using both the naturalistic and documented sources. The selected 200 Balti root words (verbs) were critically described, analyzed, and categorized within the paradigm of inflectional morphemes of tense markers using the qualitative research design. The result shows that there are 11 tense markers, i.e., “-ed", "-en", "-set", "-s", "-uk", "-nuk", "-tuk", "-ik", "-in", "-se" and "-e" in Balti language. These tense markers are added to the respective root verbs to mark present indefinite, present participle, past participle, future indefinite, and future perfect tenses.  This study will hopefully encourage future researchers to conduct research works on the various aspects of Balti language.