“Tense is most often marked on verbs, but not always. The California language Hupa has tense-marking on nouns. Thus, for example, the word for ‘house’ has three tenses: a present tense “xonta” (house which now exists), a past tense “xontaneen” (house which is now in ruins) and a future tense “xontate” (house which is not built yet). English, of course, has nothing like this, and we have to use different words to achieve the same effect: one might consider, for example, that “ex-wife” is the ‘past tense’ of “wife”, while “fiancée” is its ‘future tense’! ”
“Language: The Basics” by L. Trask