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Re: "to be" and not to be in the world's languages

From:Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>
Date:Friday, March 24, 2006, 21:41
Emaelivpeith taliesin the storyteller:
> Basically: languages which inflect the verb itself for present and > preterite/past, will also have a verb for "to be". Examples include most > IE-languages. Languages which use some other way to show time, don't > have a verb for "to be". Examples include Chinese. The reason why "to > be" is needed is because you can't add a particle/word meaning "not" > directly to a noun used as a predicate, you need a buffer-word of some > sort, hence "to be".
Do you know what he says about languages that have both independent morphemes and bound particles that can express tense? AFMC, Asha'ille does this: Pas shavni. "I spoke." / Pas kr'shavni. "I didn't speak." Shavpeni. "I spoke." / Kr'shavpeni. "I didn't speak." Or does this fit the pattern he describes, and I just misunderstood? -- AA http://conlang.arthaey.com