Re: time distinctions

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> A Chinese-American told me once that Chinese (Mandarin?) doesn't have
> verb tenses.  Is this true?  I can see a language getting by using
> circumlocutions or something to indicate time.  I've been thinking of
> doing that with Aragis.
>
> What kinds of time distinctions *can* you make?
>
> past
> present
> future
>
> Maybe all, maybe only one or two.  Who knows?
>
> Various things like progressive, imperfect, perfect, etc.  (Do they count
> as time distinctions?)
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):

  Non-past     eta    "walks, will walk, has been walking"
  Progressive  etyin  "is (engaged in the act of) walking"
  Past         ete    "walked, has (already) walked"
  Completive   etun   "walked, was walking, used to walk,
                         has walked before"

The non-past is used for states which hold at the present moment, for habitual
activities, and for states and events which will take place in the future.

The progressive is used for actions (especially volitional actions) which are
on-going at the present moment.

The past is used for single events occurring at some specific point in time in
the past.

The completive is used for past states which no longer hold, for events which
used to take place habitually in the past but no longer do so, and for events
or situations which took place at some unspecified point in time (or points in
time) in the past.

In addition, there's a perfect aspect, formed by adding an infix "-i-" after
the stressed vowel in the stem.  Perfects are treated like derived stative
verbs, and take the non-past tense (= present/future perfect) or the
completive (= past perfect).  Perfects refer to the state resulting from an
action (e.g. imperfect "tioka" = "die(s), will die"; perfect "tioika" =
"is/will be dead", "tioikun" = "was dead").

Matt.