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Re: "Anticipatory" Tense

From:William Annis <annis@...>
Date:Monday, March 4, 2002, 19:57
 >From: kam@CARROT.CLARA.NET
 >
 >But in the same vein, what about an "almost" aspect, e.g. "I almost fell
 >over, and you almost laughed out loud". Or "I nearly finished reading that
 >book" (but I never managed the last few pages).

        Vaior makes a number of distinctions in this regard, via
affixes:

     to almost, nearly (finish) X: -dim-
     to stop just before finishing X: -rdim-
     to just begin to X: -ven-
     to stop just after beginning X: -rven-

The -r- in there is related to the intentional prefix 'er-', which is
used to derive things like "look" (er-tuar-) from "see" (tuar-).

        Now I'm going to have to think about the prospective for a
bit.  :)

--
William Annis  -  System Administrator -  Biomedical Computing Group
"When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do
towards other humans."                       Marcus Aurelius  VII.65

Reply

Bob Greenwade <bob.greenwade@...>