Re: Interesting way of expressing tense/aspect distinctions.

Won't work, I'm afraid. How would you express things
like:
- I was making bubbles in my bath when the phone rang.
- I've read this book over # I've been reading this
book; I started reading this book long ago (and I
haven't finished it yet)
- not specified past (or future) # not specified at
all (intemporal: Horse is Man's friend, a rose is a
rose)
- he did it every day since 1945 until yesterday
- whenever you will read this, I'll be dead [I hope
not]

--- Adam Walker <carrajena@...> wrote:
> --- Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...>
> wrote:
> > I've thought of the following way of expressing
> > tense and aspect. It seems
> > a pretty interesting way of doing it, and might be
> > something a loglanger
> > might like, although I hope that it's not too
> > loglangy to be found in a
> > naturalistic language - perhaps somebody can find
> a
> > real example.
> >
> > Basically, rather than being marked for tense and
> > aspect in the usual way,
> > the verb is marked for inception and termination.
> > The inception marker
> > (probably a prefix) indicates when the action
> > begins, and the termination
> > marker (probably a suffix) indicates when it ends.
> > The possible values for
> > each of them might be distant past, immediate
> past,
> > present, immediate
> > future and distant future, with the possibility of
> a
> > null value for
> > "unspecified". This all maps out much the same
> > semantic space as tense and
> > aspect, but divides it up in a slightly different
> > way.
> >
> > Pete
>
> Well, I'm unaware of anything similar in a natlang,
> but I like it!  It is really interesting.  I might
> like to use something like that in one of my alien
> langs.
>
> Adam

=====
Philippe Caquant

"He thought he saw a Rattlesnake / That questioned him in Greek: / He looked
again, and found it was / The Middle of Next Week. / "The one thing I regret',
he said, / "Is that it cannot speak !' " (Lewis Carroll)

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