Re: time distinctions

On Sun, Aug 27, 2000 at 03:58:12PM -0400, The Gray Wizard wrote:
> > From: J Matthew Pearson
[snip]
> > As other people have noted, these are aspects.  My conlang Tokana has four
> > verb forms which conflate tense and aspect.  These are the non-past,
> > progressive, past, and completive (the last two are also called the past
> > definite and past indefinite, which may be better terms):
>
> This conflation is quite common I would think.  In fact, I find it difficult
> to clearly separate the two concepts, aspect and tense.  I am, of course,
> aware of the academic distinctions, but find it hard to think of one without
> the other.
[snip]

What *are* the academic distinctions? I'm not very clear on that part so
please enlighten me :-)

Also, I've a verb inflection scheme in my conlang which I'm not sure if
I'm labelling correctly... Verbs in my conlang are based on events rather
than actions per se; so it almost takes on a somewhat objective,
external-observer type perspective.

There are three "aspects":
1) Initiative: refers explicitly to the start of an event/action. For
   example, the initiative of "to walk" would be "to start walking" or
   "while starting to walk" (if in a subclause).
2) Progressive: kinda like the continuous tense in English, except that it
   carries overtones of the event being likely to be interrupted.
3) Perfective: refers to the event as a whole. It isn't perfective so
   much in the sense of the action/event being done as it is talking about
   the event as an abstract, complete unit. This is the default aspect in
   the language.

Then there are three "focuses":
1) Incidental: the event occurred by random, as far as the speaker can
  tell, and does not have any apparent purpose. This is also used when the
  speaker doesn't wish to specifically say anything about the perceived
  purpose of the event.
2) Deliberative: the event occurred for a specific purpose. E.g.: the
  deliberative of "to walk" is "to walk with a purpose", i.e., the person
  is walking with some kind of purpose or plan in mind, as opposed to
  merely wandering around.
3) Consequential: the event occurred as a result of a previous event.
  E.g.: if somebody kicked you out of his house because you did something
  dumb, you would say "I left(consequential) his house", as opposed to
  "I left(incidental) his house" -- you left for no particular reason, or
  "I left(deliberative) his house" -- you left because you wanted to go
  somewhere, or you had an argument and left as a form of protest.

My question is... what's the proper name for "focus"? I was thinking
"mood", but these aren't really moods because they are all indicative.


T