Re: Looking for a term

On Sat, 2 Sep 2006 10:34:07 +0200, taliesin the storyteller
<taliesin-conlang@...> wrote:

>* Scotto Hlad said on 2006-09-02 09:27:29 +0200
>> I'm looking for a term to describe a particular form in an a priori language
>> I'm creating.
>>
>> I plan to use verb aspects only. What I'd like to do is use the verb plus an
>> auxiliary word to create the verb in the appropriate aspect. This auxiliary
>> word will be specific enough to include the pronoun associated with it.
>>
>> Here is an example
>>
>> xyz= 1st person singluar ingressive
>>
>> Xyw walk = I start to walk
>> Xyx walk= you start to walk
>> Xyz walk=he starts to walk.
>>
>> Is there a linguistic term for this auxilary word to indicate person and
>> aspect? I have toyed with the idea of calling it the "aspectus"
>
>This very much looks like Basque, except the "auxiliary" follows the
>meaning-carrying verb in Basque. Basque uses the term "synthetic verb"
>for the "auxiliary", since it is inflected. "Walk" would in Basque be
>called a "periphrastic" verb.

Except that in Basque the aspectual part (perfect/continuous/prospective) is
mostly expressed by suffixes appended to the lexical verb, rather than in
the auxiliary (which mainly indicates person, mood, and past/non-past tense):

"ikusi dut" ("I have seen it", lit. "I have it seen")
"ikusten dut ("I see it", lit. "I have it in seeing")
"ikusiko dut" ("I will see it", lit. "I have it of seen")
"ikusi nuen" ("I saw it", lit. "I had it seen")
"ikusten nuen" ("I used to see it", lit. "I had it in seeing")
"ikusiko nuen" ("I was going to see it", lit. "I had it of seen")

OTOH, English itself uses similar constructions (a conjugated auxiliary verb
agreeing with the subject, and a lexical verb in some non-finite form) to
express most aspects, such as perfect ("I have done", "she has done"),
continuous ("I am doing", "she is doing"), ingressive ("I start to do", "she
starts to do"), etc.

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