Celtic present tense

(When I first tried to answer a post of Dan, I got it back with a message that
the address CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU had permanent fatal errors - whatever it
means -. So I'm trying again to post it. Don't be afraid if you receive it
twice, I'm trying both LISTSERV and BROWNVM addresses of CONLANG).

En réponse à Dan Jones <feuchard@...>:

>
> Are there any other conlanging examples of this sort of thing? I know
> it's
> quite common in the celtic languages.
>
Yes, I saw it in a Welsh grammar. It's used with the present progressive tense
(which in fact seems to be used quite widely). Welsh seems to have also
synthetic tenses, but uses more often periphrastic constructions (like to be +
yn + verbal noun for the present). At least, that's what I've understood, but I
may be wrong. What do the Welsh specialists on the list have to say? :)

I'm considering to use such a construction to introduce progressive tenses in
Narbonósc (which, like French, doesn't have such constructions as Spanish estar
+ gerund for it). In French, you have to use a long expression "être en
train de  + infinitive" for it, contrary to the other Romance langs I know, so I
think Narbonósc could have been innovative on this, even more than French
maybe... I have to think about it to find a good internal history of such a
construction.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr