Re: Noun tense was Re: bac . . . some info
| From: | Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, July 22, 2002, 5:45 |
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On Friday, July 19, 2002, at 07:43 , Peter Clark wrote:
> 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'm fairly sure they do exist, but I haven't been able to track one down
yet.
At the back of my mind is some idea that Innuit does this. Can anyone
either
confirm this or tell me that my mind is playing tricks?
However, the idea is certainly not new as far as conlangs are concerned.
Schleyer insisted that all Volapük roots must begin with a consonant so
that
the vowel prefixes could indicate tense even in non-verbs, e.g. _del_ "day"
--> _adel_ "today", odel "tomorrow", ädel "yesterday.
Even before that Leibniz, in outlining his notions of a conlang that was to
be "an algebra of thought" (AFAIK he never got beyond the blueprint stage)
,
proposed extending time-flexions to adjectives [as Japanese does), adverbs
and nouns.
Ray.
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