Re: Tense naming question

Mark J. Reed wrote:

>On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 05:41:31PM +0000, Joe wrote:
>
>
>>Matt Trinsic wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Greetings all,
>>>I have recently modified the language I am currently working on to
>>>include two different past tenses. One is for actions that started in
>>>the past, but are still happening. The other for actions that started in
>>>the past are are no longer happening. Is there a name for these
>>>different tenses, and if not, does anyone have any good suggestions
>>>and/or interesting examples of naturals languages that have the same
>>>distinction?
>>>
>>>
>>Well, something that was started in the past and is still happening is a
>>present.  Something that's no longer happening is a past.
>>
>>
>
>Let's think about terminology for your lang.  If the set of tenses
>looks something like this, then these names may work:
>
>START   END             NAME
>past    past            perfect
>past    present         preterit
>past    future          imperfect
>present present         present
>present future          progressive
>future  future          future
>
>
>
Well, most of that seems untrue to me.  The way I see it, there's
past-1, past-0 and past+1.   That is, past-1 is further back in the
past, past-0 is somewhere between the two, and past+1 further forward in
the past.

So -

START    END    NAME
past-1      past-1   perfect
past-1      past-0   preterite
past-1      past+1  imperfect
past(any)  future    present(To me, this is the same as progressive.)
future        future    future


Now, we could get more finely grained than this.

So, starting 'past-0', and ending past+1 would be 'had just started'.
Starting present, ending  future, 'have just started, and soforth.