Re: "Anticipatory" Tense

>Ian Maxwell writes:  So, I was thinking, since one of my conlangs
>already has a complex Latin-esque inflection system, I might as well
>make it even more complex. I decided to add, in addition to the
>perfect and imperfect verb forms, an "anticipatory" form--for example,
>the first person past anticipatory of "to go" would be "I was about to
>go", and the first person future anticipatory would be "I will be
>about to go".
 >
 > My question is, does a word already exist for this, or can I just use my own invented word?

I believe that would be the prospective aspect.  See
http://www.invisiblelighthouse.com/langlab/aspect.html
under the heading "Perfect (retrospective) and progressive".
I learned everything I know about aspect from that document, so if
it's wrong, so am I.

I was going to say that perfect, imperfect and progressive are aspects
rather than tenses (as they've been referred to in most replies to
this) but the abovelinked notes that this classification is not
unanimously accepted.

Incidentally, this is my first post to CONLANG.  Hello, everyone. I
probably won't post again until my own conlang has a morphology
developed enough to derive its own name, but who knows?


 >
 > - Ian Maxwell
 >
 > ---------------
 > "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on
occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them
unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." - James D. Nicoll

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