Re: Back to the Future (was: I'm back, sort of)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tristan McLeay" <zsau@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2003 12:42 PM
Subject: Re: Back to the Future (was: I'm back, sort of)


> On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Peter Bleackley wrote:
>
> > Future English will have a nominative case of nouns and pronouns which
is
> > marked for tense.
>
> I think better: English may have mood/aspect particles which incorporate
> the person and number and/or cliticise onto the noun. (I think also it
> might be pro-drop: there are certainly times even without redundency when
> pronouns can be skipped.)
>
> Actually, that's practically already happened. As I've mentioned before,
> IMD the plural pronouns + 'to be' only keep the first consonant the same
> (e.g.  we /wIi/ vs we're /we:/; you /ji\u\/ vs you're /jo:/; they /D&i/ vs
> /De:/) and less noticeable things happen in other contexts.
>
With pronouns in, the verb to be goes [Aim], [jO:], [hi:z], [wI@], [DE:](no
comments on pronunciation, please).  There are two of those that can be said
to be clitics, [hi:z] and [DE:].  And as English barely ever uses the simple
present, English can be said to be pro-drop in the present tense.

> --
> Tristan                  <kesuari@...>
>
> Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
> be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
>                 -- Snoopy
>

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