Re: CHAT: relative tense

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.

Ok, its not marking distance from present, and the date is the only
indication that the event occured in the past (or future, depending on your
point of view), but you get the idea.

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).

---
Fabian
Rule One: Question the unquestionable,
ask the unaskable, eff the ineffable,
think the unthinkable, and screw the inscrutable.



>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.
>