Re: time distinctions

On Wed, Aug 23, 2000 at 04:56:35PM -0400, 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.
Don't be surprised that Mandarin (or other dialects, AFAIK) doesn't have
any verb tenses. In fact, it's so analytical that nouns don't even have
number! Tense in Mandarin is picked up by context. For example, a question
like "will you come for dinner?" in Mandarin is literally "can you come or
not come for dinner?"; whereas "did you come for dinner?" is literally
"have you or not come for dinner?"

I don't think Mandarin has a way of differentiating between past and
perfect tenses. Of course, you do have various ways of talking about the
past, each with its own nuances, so arguably you can express the idea of a
perfect tense in Mandarin. But a Mandarin speaker certainly doesn't think
in terms of whether an action is past or perfect.

> What kinds of time distinctions *can* you make?
>
> past
> present
> future
>
> Maybe all, maybe only one or two.  Who knows?
AFAIK every language has a way of expressing time at least those three
time distinctions. It's just a question of whether this distinction is
built into the language, or it's expressed by using explicit words to
indicate time (or anywhere in between).

> Various things like progressive, imperfect, perfect, etc.  (Do they count
> as time distinctions?)
I think this is called "aspect". E.g., (classical) Greek verbs have both
time and aspect: time can be past, present, future; aspect can be
imperfect (ongoing action), aorist (single action), perfect (completed
action), pluperfect (completed action, further in the past). Not all
combinations are possible, as verb conjugations come in various
time-aspect combinations that doesn't cover all possibilities. (Though I
fancy you can use the verb to-be plus a participle as a periphrastic way
to cover the missing combinations... Greek participles are amazingly
versatile.)

> Maybe narratives and historicals go in here, too?  I've wanted to include
> a "legendary" tense in Chevraqis, which indicates something that
> "took/takes place" in a legendary context, so you'd use it when speaking
> of folklore (Tyl Eulenspiegel's exploits?) or legends (Niebelungenlied?
> creation myths?) or prophecies (the Book of Revelation?  Götterdämerung?
> and I *know* I misspelled that somehow).  But then I'm not sure if it'd
> count as a tense.  (wistfully)  It'd be *fun* if I knew it were allowable.
Allowable? Anything is allowable, as long as it's consistent with the rest
of your grammar :-) In fact, there are several other conlangs that
incorporate these things into verbs.

E.g., Laadan verbs can indicate various degrees of "trust", e.g., you use
one form for information you got from somebody that you don't trust,
another form for your own opinion, another form for info from somebody you
totally trust (and therefore assume as fact), etc..

Another conlang (forgot which one) differentiates between recent past and
distant past and (IIRC) legendary (i.e., so long ago the speaker isn't
sure that it's a fact).

Another thing you can do with verbs is "mood":
- Indicative: the "usual" tense, used for making statements ("He was at
  the house")
- Imperative: for commands ("Go to the house!")
- Optative: something the speaker wishes to happen ("I wish that he
  would go to the house!")
- Subjunctive: for possible happenings which may or may not be actual
  occurrences ("if he had gone to the house, he would have seen the
  thief")
- Hortative(sp?): speaker tells himself, or the group he's representing,
  to do something ("Let's go to the house!")

There are other possibilities too, the above is what I remember from Greek
class :-)


T