Re: What's that Aspect?

Roger Mills scripsit:

> alandani < alo 'from' anju 'time,moment' + tani, gen. of tayu 'this'; in
> proper written work it requires a future tense:
> alandani mameloto re me ilepes 'lowis' "Henceforth I wish to be called Lois"
> (lit. ...I-want-fut that me they-call Lois-- I suppose one could say
> _ilepesto_, too, with a future tense.)
That last point is a question of sequence of tenses.  Does Kash say
"I will want that they will call me Lois", where the tense in the
subordinate clause is absolute, or does it say "I will want that they
call-PRES me Lois", where the tense in the subordinate clause is relative
to the tense in the main clause?

English favors the first (with an exception in the case of future, because
future is historically a modal, not a tense at all); most reasonable
languages prefer the second.  I don't think this is something a language
can waffle on, because it would lead to gross ambiguities.

If it's less confusing, think about past rather than future: "I desired
that John liked James" (absolute) vs. "I desired that John likes James"
(relative).

ObConlang: At the urging of Ivan Derzhanski, Lojban adopted the relative
interpretation.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
Promises become binding when there is a meeting of the minds and consideration
is exchanged. So it was at King's Bench in common law England; so it was
under the common law in the American colonies; so it was through more than
two centuries of jurisprudence in this country; and so it is today.
       --Specht v. Netscape

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