Re: Noun tense was Re: Random |mormon| :-)

In a message dated 1/26/03 12:13:44 AM, peter-clark@BETHEL.EDU writes:

>On Saturday 25 January 2003 09:29 pm, Josh Roth wrote:
>> 'mormon' /mV4mVn/ actually is a word in Eloshtan. 'mormo' means 'body
>of
>> water', and -n indicates a future tense, though noun tenses are a bit
>> archaic. So, 'a future body of water.' If you had to add any other ending
>> onto the noun though, it would end up being homophonous with the
>> subjunctive version (e.g., 'mormonok" = 'future body of water' or
>> 'hypothetical body of water'?) - likely one reason why at least the future
>> tense of nouns largely disappeared.
>
>        Noun tense? Did you snitch this from Enamyn? Please describe it.
>        :Peter
>        (P.S. And for the record, "mormon" means nothing in Enamyn.)
Well it's nothing too spectacular, in Eloshtan anyway. I snitched it from
Unknown Native American Language(s) that I read about a long time ago. It
just specifies the time period of the noun's existence, or existence as
described in the sentence. "tem melegesi" is "my friend," "tem melegesit" is
"my old/ex/former/late friend," "tem melegesir" is "the one who is
*presently* my friend," "tem melegisin" is "my future friend." The
subjunctive noun mood is still in regular use, and refers to something that
does not necessarily exist or not exist at any point in time, but which you
want to speak about anyway. So in the Babel story, for example, when they
talk about building a city and a tower whose top reaches to heaven, those
nouns are both hypothetical, so they are in the subjunctive. With "my friend"
again, it would be "ten melegesine." Of course, for back-vowel words, that
suffix is -no rather than -ne. Subjunctive nouns (as well as negative nouns)
trigger subjunctive mood in verbs. Noun tenses don't trigger tense agreement
in verbs though.

Josh Roth

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