Hodiernal tense

A hodiernal tense (abbreviated HOD) is a grammatical tense for the current day. (Hodie or hodierno die is Latin for 'today').^[1]

Hodiernal tenses refer to events of today (in an absolute tense system) or of the day under consideration (in a relative tense system).^[2]

Hodiernal past tense refers to events of earlier today (or earlier than the reference point of the day under consideration), while hodiernal future tense refers to events of later today (or later than the reference point of the day under consideration). A post-hodiernal tense is a future tense for events that will occur after today or the day under consideration, while pre-hodiernal is a past tense for events that occurred before today or the day under consideration.

Languages which include or included hodiernal tenses include Mwera and Classical French (it is suggested that in 17th-century French, the passé composé served as a hodiernal past).^[3] Mwotlap (Vanuatu) has a hodiernal future, which is the only absolute tense of its TAM system.^[4]

The term 'hodiernal past' was first used in publications in 1968.^[5]

References

1. Cicero, Philippic IV; Livy, 27; Seneca, Epistulae Morales 80.
2. Comrie (1985) Tense, p.87.
3. The evolution of grammar: tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world; Joan L. Bybee, Revere Dale Perkins, William Pagliuca; University of Chicago Press, 1994
4. See pp.258-269 of: François, Alexandre (2003), La sémantique du prédicat en mwotlap (Vanuatu), Collection Linguistique de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, Leuven-Paris: Peeters, ISBN 90-429-1271-5.
5. Google ngrams.