Noun tense was Re: bac . . . some info

On Thursday 18 July 2002 19:32, Tim May wrote:
> Peter Clark writes:
>  >         As others have said, good job. I see that another person has
>  > discovered the joys of noun tense! Enamyn does this too, as well as
>  > using mutations
>
> I'm sure there is a natlang with noun tense in Campbell, but I can't
> find it, and I'm beginning to suspect that I dreamt it.  Does anyone
> know any examples of natlangs that mark tense on a noun?
        I don't know about Campbell, but Thomas Payne (of "Describing Morphosyntax"
fame) sent me an email long ago about Panare that has some features of noun
tense:
---
We have analyzed Panare (a Cariban language of Venezuela) as having three
participles, a "past participle" (like the -ed/-en participles of English), a
"present participle" (like -ing)  and a "future participle." The last means
that the thing referred to is "destined to be." Here are some examples:

yamasa'      "Hit thing" PAST
yamañe      "Hitting thing" PRESENT
yamase'ña  "Thing destined to be hit." FUTURE

These are all nouns, but they are based on a verb root (ama "hit"). So in some
sense this might be considered a tense system reflected on nouns. But,
significantly I think, it only occurs on nouns that are derived from verb
roots. This is a well-installed part of the morphology of Panare -- much more
productive than ex- in English.
---
        :Peter

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