THE POTENTIAL USE OF BIMA LANGUAGE VERBAL ASPECTS IN TEACHING ENGLISH FOR SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

This study aimed at finding the potential use of the Bima language (Serasuba dialect) in teaching the tenses of English. This potential is revealed through conducting a contrastive analysis between the two languages verbal aspects especially on their tenses. The qualitative method was employed in this study. By using the morphological analyses toward the structures, it was found that the Bima language shares the present and future marked by the proclitics ku-, mu-, na-, ta-, ta- and past tense marked by and enclitics -ku, -mu, -na,   -ta,  -ta and prefix ra- in which they can both exist together as circumfix. The English past tense is dominantly marked by the suffix –ed in the regular, -t and –en for regular, verb for the past tense while the suffix –s marks the present tense that agrees with the third singular person. The future tense of this language is marked by the use of modal will. The two languages share the present, past and the future tense in common. However, even in their similarities (present, past and future), the differences are still found as they express the tense differently. From this fact, the potential use of the Bima language falls into the use of the Proclitic and prefix in giving the equivalent concept to the English future tense while the enclitic and the prefix ra- is used to give an equal concept to the past tense. The perfective aspect “wa’ura” is proposed to understand the perfective has/have/had in English.

Keyword: Potential, Bima language, verbal aspect.