Re: Aspects vs. Tenses in an All-Out Grudge Match!

Steg Belsky wrote:

> As far as i remember from class, this is both the "simple past" and the
> "present perfect" (although my teacher didn't use any terms nearly that
> technical).  I think someone mentioned on Conlang a while ago that German
> uses a 'real' past tense.  Does it also use its form of _hobn_ to make a
> present perfect?
Well, if by "real", you mean a simplex verb form, yes it does.  The
preteriteform of the verb is analogous to English's simple past, at least
insofar as they
are historically and morphologically related.  For example, look at the
following:

Eng:  (I) sing - (I) sang - (I have) sung
Ger:  (ich) singe [zIN@] - (ich) sang [za:N] - (ich habe) gesungen [g@zUN@n]

The preterite in German is, however, almost entirely confined to the written
word, with the exception of helping verbs ("war", "hatte", "wurde", etc. are
commonplace).  The result of this is that what is technically called the
present
perfect is used for all spoken past tenses, taking the above into
consideration.

> ANOTHER MESSAGE:
> In a message dated 8/21/1999 12:23:28 AM, steven@OLYWA.NET writes:
> >>Isn't present perfect used instead of simple past in some languages?
>
> >Yes, in French for example, except in some literature, and......
> maybe=20
> >sometimes in Italian..... I can't remember anymore. :-(
> >
> >I wonder why in French, some verbs use one auxiliary (avoir-to have)
> and=20
> >others (around 20 intransitives) use another (=EAtre-to be). Actually,
> didn'=
> >t=20 English do this too at one point?
IIRC, it originally had to do with an intransitive - transitive
distinction.Verbs of motion like "laufen" or "gehen" which take "sein" as the
helping
verb in Modern German are intransitive, by and large, while verbs like
"singen", "spielen" are transitive, and so take "haben".  That, at least, is
the historical situation as I understand it.  It's much messier now
(_sterben_,
"to die", cognate with English "starve", takes sein like verbs of motion...).

> Yiddish does this.  Contrast the above verbs with:
>
> "be" = zain: bin / bist / iz / zainen / zait / zainen
>
> mir zainen = we are
> mir zainen geven = we were
In Standard German:wir sind
wir waren/wir sind gewesen (the latter is rare in speech).

> er kumt = he comes
> er iz gekumen = he came
In Standard German:

er kommt
er ist gekommen