Re: unmarked tense/aspect

Staving Estel Telcontar:
>Hi,
>I've been making some progress on my all-verb language, and I'm trying
>to work on tense and aspect.
>
>The language will distinguish past, present and future tense
>It will distinguish at least imperfective, perfective and perfect
>aspect; imperfective may be divided into progressive and habitual, but
>I'm not yet sure.
>
>Are there any tense/aspect combinations that are more likely to be
>unmarked than others?  I imagine it's unlikely that the future perfect
>would be the unmarked form :)
I would expect present tense to be most likely to be unmarked, and
imperfective aspect. If you distinguish between habitual and progressive, I
would guess that habitual is more likely to be unmarked, as the simple
present in English is often used in the sense of the habitual (even though
other habitual forms are available, eg "I keep coming up with odd
conlanging ideas," "I used to use automatic writing a lot.")

Pete