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Re: Noun tense

From:julien eychenne <eychenne.j@...>
Date:Tuesday, July 23, 2002, 9:21
le mar 23-07-2002 à 00:43, Nik Taylor a écrit :
> julien eychenne wrote:
> > Tensed nouns are > > supposed to bear in themselves a tense value, such as nawatl |in > > tlânamaka-k| is 'the one who sold' > "the seller". But pronouns in that > > case don't bear this value intrinsecally (we don't have |I'll| = > > *"future me" or something like that) but it just supports the value of > > the tensed verb. So it seems that these are two different things. > > Well, perhaps, but what would you suggest calling it then? It's tense > that's marked on nouns. I'd certainly call it "noun tense" or maybe if > I wanted to be more exact "noun-marked tense" or something like that.
You're right, it is tense *marked* on nouns, not tensed nouns. The differende, as Jeff J. pointed out, is the semantics : I would consider that in the first case (marked on noun) the whole cognitive scene is tense-marked so that |he'll leave| is 'he + TENSE-leave' (at a rough semantic level) and not *'he-TENSE + leave' : here you can say that there is a scene of my wife leaving, and this scene takes place in the future; whereas in the latter case, |my ex-wife is leaving| is 'my + TENSE(/ASPECT)-wife + leave' and not *'my + wife + TENSE(/ASPECT)-leave' : here you can just say that there is a scene of a woman-who-used-to-be-my-wife leaving, and this scene takes place in the present. I understand the view that the tense mark could evolve sticking to the noun ;), and why not become a real noun tense marker (even if I am a bit suspicious, just because the verb will then need its own tense marker), but by now we cannot consider that they are tensed. Sorry if there was a misunderstanding Julien.