Re: ideas and questions

On Mar 4, 2004, at 7:19 PM, Etak wrote:

> Hello!
[snip]

>    Secondly, can someone give some ideas about how I
> might form the imperfect in my conlang?  Currently,
> moods, like imperative, subjunctive, and indicative,
> and tenses are shown using prefixes, and person and
> number are shown with suffixes.  But, I'm not sure how
> to show aspects, like the imperfect.
Shemspreg, a PIE spin off I worked on a few years ago had a system
which I was fond of. The main verbal distinction was between present
and past tense; the present tense was marked by the suffix -(e)s on the
verb stem, and the past tense was marked by the suffix -i and a reduced
form of the verb. For example, the past tense stem of the verb sed-
'sit' was -sd-i. Aspect was distinguished only in the past.
Imperfective was marked by prefixation of e-; perfective was marked by
reduplication. So the full paradigm for sed- 'sit' is as follows:

sed-
	sed-es	'sits, is sitting'
	e-sd-i	'was sitting'
	se-sd-i	'sat, have sat'

So that's how I did it for Shemspreg.

Miapimoquitch has another system I like. It distinguishes between
perfective and imperfective (roughly) by gemination of a medial
consonant and suffixation of -ka. The stem has a default perfective
reading; with gemination and/or suffixation it changes to imperfective:

	winete   'turned'
	winnete  'is/was turning'

	pite     'saw'
	pitte-ka 'is/was seeing'

The suffixation is prosodically determined; if the stem consists of two
light syllables or a heavy syllable followed by a light syllable, the
suffix is obligatory. Otherwise, the suffix is not usual.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie