Re: "Anticipatory" Tense

> Date:         Sat, 2 Mar 2002 19:37:36 +0000
> From: Tim May <butsuri@...>
>
> Lars Henrik Mathiesen writes:
>  > According to Trask, prospective denotes the state of being about to do
>  > something, not the immediacy of the actual act --- the crown prince is
>  > going to become king, some time the next thirty years --- and it thus
>  > shares the stative status of perfect, and presumably its aspecthood.
>  >
>  > (I think Welsh and Irish express the perfect by something like 'is
>  > after', and the prospective by 'is before', clearly marking them as
>  > states).
>
> Interesting - I guess this makes more sense (to have a grammatical
> indication for) than immediacy, although personally I find it an odd
> way of thinking about a future event.  Possibly a result of only being
> able to think in English.  I can see it being useful to refer to a
> future event relative to the time being discussed (which is in the
> past or future), but I'm not sure I can see its usefulness in the
> present.  A present state can't result from a future action one under
> normal circumstances, after all.
Well, do you accept mortality as a state, for instance? All men are
going to die (prospective) = all men are mortal (present state).

English does conflate immediate future (I'm going to eat dinner) and
prospective (as above), that may be part of the problem.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)

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