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

Hi!

Eldin Raigmore writes:
> 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?
> 3. Or that they are both quite Tense-Prominent and quite Aspect-Prominent?
> 3a. Nevertheless, rather more Tense-Prominent than Aspect-Prominent?
> 3b. Nevertheless, rather more Aspect-Prominent than Tense-Prominent?
> 3c. About equally Aspect-Prominent as Tense-Prominent?
> 4. Would you say they are neither very Tense-Prominent nor very Aspect-
> Prominent?
> 4a. Nevertheless, rather more Tense-Prominent than Aspect-Prominent?
> 4b. Nevertheless, rather more Aspect-Prominent than Tense-Prominent?
> 4c. About equally Aspect-Prominent as Tense-Prominent?
Fukhian has neither grammatical tense nor aspect marking.  So 4c.  (It
does have marking for 'Vorzeitigkeit', but I don't know what that is
in English.)  It lacks aspect marking for the reason Herman Miller
mentioned: I did not know it existed.  It lacks tense marking because
I learned that tense was not mandatory in some languages, and I
probably included it in order to collect interesting features.

Tyl Sjok is pro-drop, ambiguous, and underspecified.  It is 4c.

Qþyn|gài has morphemes for tense and aspect, but they are not
mandatory either.  Again, it is 4c.  One of the mandatory categories
is evidentiality/mood.

And theoretically, S11 is like Qþyn|gài, but has no words or morphemes
yet.

So I seem to clearly prefer 4c for my artlangs. :-)

Finally, Da Mätz se Basa and Þrjótrunn are both a posteriori langs
(Germanic and Romance, resp.).

**Henrik