Re: time distinctions

> From: Yoon Ha Lee
> Subject: time distinctions
>
> 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?
You might want to reference a text on tense such as Comrie's _Tense_ for a
discussion of absolute (taking the present as their deictic reference) vs.
relative (taking some point in time given by the context as its reference)
tenses.

> Various things like progressive, imperfect, perfect, etc.  (Do they count
> as time distinctions?)
These are aspects and certainly do count as time distinctions, although of a
different sort than tense.  Aspect deals with the internal temporal
constituency of the predication.

> 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.
My language, amman iar, uses a combination of past tense and habitual aspect
for this, but it also uses the past habitual for "historical present", used
in narrative t make the past more vivid.

David

David E. Bell
The Gray Wizard
www.graywizard.net

"'Yes, I think I shall express the accusative case by a prefix!'

A memorable remark! Just consider the splendour of the words!  'I shall
express the accusative case.'  Magnificent!  Not 'it is expressed' nor even
the more shambling 'it is sometimes expressed', nor the grim 'you must learn
how it is expressed'.  What a pondering of alternatives within one's choice
before the final decision in favour of the daring and unusual prefix, so
personal, so attractive; the final solution of some element in a design that
had hitherto proved refractory.  Here were no base considerations of the
'practical', the easiest for the 'modern mind', or for the million – only a
question of taste, a satisfaction of a personal pleasure, a private sense of
fitness."

(from The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays - A Secret Vice,
by J.R.R. Tolkien [Houghton Mifflin Company 1984])