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
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