Re: Theory about the evolution of languages

Afian wrote: "I said that when I say tenses, I also mean aspects of them."

Tense and aspect are two separate categories. The terms cannot be used
interchangeably. Thus, "TAM" (tense, aspect, and mood) is useful here.

"Hungarian has a future construction. If the will-future is a tense, this is
too."

See below on English 'will'; same applies IMHO to Hungarian fog-.

Philip wrote: "I don't think that genitive is a case for English nouns."

Me neither. It's akin to French ne...pas, which may sound like a circumfix
but in reality is a clitic composed of ne and pas. N'est-ce pas ? ;)

"[...] I [don't] think that possessive pronouns are the genitive case of
personal pronouns; they act like adjectives, not like nouns."

IMHO this is rather fuzzy. How would you define these words to be acting
like nouns tho? If they were derived with the clitic -'s? Couldn't one make
a case for these being suppletive genitive-case forms of the personal
pronouns? ;)

"It depends on whether you consider synthetic tenses to be separate, I
suppose; just as some number things such as "You will have been reading" as
an instance of the continuous future perfect tense (or some such) in
English, whereas others say that English only has two tenses: present ("I
go") and past ("I went"), all other forms of the verb being formed from
(present or past) participle or infinitive + auxiliary verbs, and not being
counted as separate tenses."

My opinion is that English has two tenses, past and nonpast, and uses a
whole lot of analitical constructions with auxiliaries and participles (the
selection process of what combination to use is insanely baroque). The
auxiliary 'will' does not substantiate a 'future tense': it's modal.

Cheers,

Trebor
"Oysters are a fine thing, so are strawberries: but mashed together?"

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