Verbs in Pidgin are non-inflective. This means that verbs are not modified to express tense. Instead, auxiliary words are placed in the context of verbs to indicate their tense.
To illustrate this, we will consider the constructions of English sentence “I will run” in different tenses and the equivalent constructions in different tenses in Pidgin.
| Tense | Pidgin Sentence | English Equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Future Tense | I go run. | I will run. |
| Present continuous tense | I dey run. | I am running. |
| The Past Tense | I run. | I ran. |
| Simple present tense | I dey run. | I run. |
| Past perfect tense | I bin run. | I had run. |
Notice that, in the English language, to change the tense of the verb “to run,” the verb gets modified. In pidgin, however, auxillary words like “go”, “bin” and “dey”, are placed next to verbs to indicate the time of an action.