Re: CHAT: relative tense

Fabian <rhialto@...> wrote:

> English *almost* does that, in phrases such as
>
> Let's have lunch Friday.
>
> The ambiguity of such sentences probably explains why it has not caught on.
>
> I'm told that Mandarin Chinese doesn't mark tense unless necessary for
> comprehension, so a glossed sentence might read:
>
> year 1939 Hitler invade Poland.
1939 nian Hitlar dasuan Poland (if I'm correct - it's been a decade since I
studied Chinese), but there's a nice particle, -le, that can be added to a verb
to add a
'perfective' meaning (or a host of other meanings [1]). But it is true that
Chinese
languages don't mark tense on the verb, relying on lexical items like zuotian
(yesterday) or mingtian (tomorrow). It's a bit of stumbling block for people
learning Chinese - they tend to put -le after each and every non-present verb...

>
> I can't think of any language that would survive without a way to explicitly
> express past/future distinctions when necessary, even if it does not always
> explicitly state them (as in Chinese).
>
In every language it's possible to indicate that something has happened in
the past or will happen in the future, but those distinctions are not
necessarily marked on the verb.

Boudewijn Rempt
boud@rempt.xs4all.nl
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt