Re: Verb tenses question

* Muke Tever (alrivera@southern.edu) [991220 07:03]:
> I am sticking with 'inceptive' as it's the only one my dictionary lists as
> having that sense in grammar (well, except for 'inchoative', which gets 'see
> inceptive').
I've used inceptive as well, since inchoative seems more general and
ambiguous.

> I hadn't thought of the difference between 'about to' and 'going to', but
> for my purposes I don't think it will be too important.  (I had meant to
> show different aspects of the, er, aspect by phrasing it in different ways,
> in hopes of getting a different answer than the one *every* nonlinguist I
> asked gave, that being 'future perfect')
Heh :)
--[with the appropriate excuses for twisted time-lines etc.]--

"And now the evenings grudge-match: in the left corner we have
the grammarians, in the right the linguists. And it begins! *bong*
The linguists have scored the first point! Comrie deftly attacked the
use of the term 'perfect' and 'aorist' in his 1976 megahit[1]
"Aspect : An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems"!
And he does it again! Another point scored with the 1985 classic
"Tense"[2]! Twoooo points for the linguists!

[commercial break]

And we're back to the grammarians vs. linguists grudge match! Boy is
this turning out ugly, the linguists has started fighting amongst
themselves! The Chomskyite faction is leaving the field to concentrate
on the language instinct! But! Comrie does it -again-!
"Language Universals and Linguistic Typology"[3] has made the grammarians
run for cover! [...]

> *Muke, who should probably have to study more grammar if he keeps this up.
Conlanging is an excellent excuse for reading up on linguistics, just
don't tell the linguists that's why you do it ;)

Other good books (not by Comrie, alas): "Describing morphosyntax" (1997)
by Thomas E. Payne, "The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language" (1997) by
David Crystal and the linguistic dictionaries by R. L. Trask.

[1] ISBN 0521290457
[2] ISBN 0521281385
[3] out of print - figures :/


tal. (If Comrie was a rock star I'd be the leader of his fan-club :) )
--
Teflon Brain 2000(tm) - Excuse of the Future!