Re: TYPOLOGY: (conlangs and natlangs): "Tense-Prominent" vs "Aspect-Prominent"

Eldin Raigmore wrote:

> How about your conlangs?  Would you say they are:
> 1. Very Tense-Prominent but not very Aspect-Prominent?
> 2. Very Aspect-Prominent but not very Tense-Prominent?
My earlier languages were more "tense-prominent", for a simple reason: I
wasn't aware that such a thing as "aspect" existed. Later, I gradually
started shifting to more "aspect-prominent" languages.

> That might not be all there is to it at all.
> Languages with evidentials may be "Mood-Prominent", or at
> least "Evidential-Prominent", rather than either Aspect-Prominent or Tense-
> Prominent.
>
> Does your conlang require that any speaker mention how he/she knows what
> he/she is saying happened, but hardly ever require at that they mention
> when it happened (or how often it happened, or how long it took to happen,
> or whatever)?
Tirelat requires an evidential suffix on verbs, but the evidential
suffix also specifies the tense. For instance, there's a "past hearsay"
suffix -li- and a "nonpast hearsay" suffix -ja-. The aspect suffix is
also obligatory in most cases.

> Whatever your answers to the above questions, can you also answer this one?
> Where did you get that idea to put it in your conlang?
> Is your conlang a lot like any natlang or any group of natlangs in that
> way?
I started putting aspects into my languages after reading about the
Slavic languages. I'm not sure when I had the idea to de-emphasize
tense, but I would've known about languages like Chinese.

I got the idea for evidential suffixes from Thomas E. Payne's book
_Describing Morphosyntax_.