Re: CHAT: relative tense

At 09:32 22/03/99 +0100, you wrote:
>dunn patrick w wrote:
>
>>Is there any natural language that has a relative verb tense?  For
>>instance, if 'eho means "speak"
>>
>>ne'eho might mean "I speak now."
>>to'eho might mean "I spoke/will speak sometime within the forseeable
>>future/past"
>>ke'eho might mean "I spoke/will speak sometime within the historical
>>future/past"
>>
>>In other words, not differentiating for past or future, but for distance
>>form the present.
>
>
>Comrie (in his Tense, Cambridge University Press), says not - there are
very few
>languages with metrical distinctions in their tense systems (long ago, fairly
>long ago, recent past, present, forseeable future, distant future), but they
>seem to exist - but there are no languages that don't make a distiction in
>direction, but do make a distinction in distance.
>
>I think the universal is, direction first (most often past vs.
present/future),
>and distance second.
>
>
>As an aside - I've just subscribed to the list after lurking on my wife's
>account for a while. My own primary conlang, Denden, has a metrical
distinction
>in tense, with four degrees in the past and two into the future. On the other
>hand, the languages I'm a specialist in (Sino-Tibetan languages of the
>Himalaya), don't have much of a tense distinction - though extremely
complicated
>agreement systems. Does anyone know of a conlang that has object agreement
>incorporated into the verb?
>
        My Astou and my Azak have. Azak is available on the web, but not Astou
(I'm currently working on "translating" the grammar from what I did when I
was 17 :) . At that time, I made many confusions on words and have now
difficulties to re-read myself :) ).

        One particular thing about Astou is that it possesses an active voice,
where transitive verbs agree both in subject and object, and a "middle"
voice, where subject and object are the same, so there is only one personal
ending on the verb, which is different from both the subject and the object
endings.

>Example:
>
>1,2, 3 first, second, third person
>s, d, p singular, dual, plural
>S, O subject, object
>
>I eat_1sS_3sO an apple
>I eat_1sS_3dO two apples
>We (three) eat_1pS_3pO three apples
>
>Boudewijn Rempt
>
>boud@rempt.xs4all.nl
>www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt
>
>
                                                        Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html