Perfective Present Indicative

The perfective present indicative tense describes a single occurrence in present or future, which is based on the known state of affairs (→ indicative mood). This Persian tense is called “present simple” in other grammar references. However, it has perfective aspect and contrasts with imperfective present. English “present simple” is not exclusively used to express perfective aspect and therefore, it is not an exact equivalent of Persian perfective present. For example, in the sentence “I walk every day” it is used to express imperfective aspect whereas Persian has a distinct tense for this (imperfective present). In Persian, tenses are divided to past and non-past (i.e. present or future). That is, present tenses can equally express future occurrences depending on the context. Regarding perfective present, it can also function as perfective future.

Formation

The perfective present tense is formed according to the following pattern in indicative mood:

Conjugation

Simple verbs

• Verb: رفتن (“raftan”; to go)
• Present stem: رو (“rav”)

Compound verbs

• Verb: کار کردن (“kâr kardan”; to work)
• Preverb: کار (“kâr”)
• Present stem: کن (“kon”)

Negative conjugation

The negative form of perfective present indicative is constructed by prefixing ن (“na”) to present stem.

Examples

Special cases

Epenthetic consonant

When the present stem ends in a vowel sound, the epenthetic consonant ی (“y”) is added between the stem and the ending.

Verb بودن (to be)

The verb بودن (“budan”; to be) has a variety of forms in perfective present. The first form is constructed from the original present stem “bav-”, which is pronounced “bov-” in modern Persian. This form is only used in literature.

For the sense of “to be” in perfective present, there are two additional forms: free (strong) and bound (weak). The bound form is enclitic and phonologically, dependent on its preceding word. Therefore, the bound form is not used alone. The free form is similar to Spanish “estar” and basically means “to exist, to be somewhere/there” but it is also used as an emphatic form of “to be”.

The bound forms should be written as separate words because they have a distinct grammatical role. For example, in خوبم (“xub-am”; I am fine), “xub” is an adjective and "am" is a verb. Therefore, they should not be written attached to each other. However, in the received orthography, this is only observed for 3S (“ast”) and the other bound forms are written attached to their preceding word.

In most cases, when the word preceding the bound form ends in a vowel sound, the epenthetic consonant ی (“y”) is added between the word and the bound form.

The bound forms, particularly “ast”, can form a contraction with their preceding word, when it ends in a vowel sound. Contractions are more prevalent in spoken Persian.

Regarding the free and bound forms of بودن, the negation particle (“na”) combines with the present stem and results in a special negative form:

The following table shows the negative conjugation for the literary form of بودن: