Re: Noun tense

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.