ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the indicative mood of the verb in Swahili, that is, the form of the verb that serves to state facts without a particular connotation. In Swahili, the verbs in the indicative mood are the only ones that formally mark tenses in their morphology. Verbs in other moods are implicitly in the present tense. The chapter presents the four main tenses of the Swahili verb using the stem -ona "see". The Swahili verb marks four main temporal distinctions: the past, the perfect, the present, and the future. The indicative negative has the same tense division as the affirmative, though the tense markers may be different for all except future tense. The chapter shows tense markers of the indicative in negative form. The "habitual tense" is a variant of the present tense, which means "usually/usually not". In the affirmative form, the habitual tense is expressed by the marker hu- for all persons, with no subject prefix.
