Re: Noun tense

From: "Jeff Jones" <jeffsjones@...>
>>        You are correct...at this point in English's development. What my
>> point was that it is entirely possible that future generations will
>> analyze (pro-)noun + auxiliary contraction as a single unit.
>>        For example, take the natural process of languages, which
>> generally moves isolating -> agglutinating -> fusional -> isolating.
>
>No argument there, but I think julien was referring to the semantics. The
>English examples mark the tense of the noun's matrix, not that of the noun
>itself. Something like
>(John-PAST write letter) could be
>"John wrote a letter" using the English-style interpretation, and
>"The person who was John writes a letter" using the other.
The thing is, constructions like "the person who was John" and "ex-wife" as
entities seem more chiefly *aspectual* and not *temporal*.   This may be because
"aspect" is like looking at a verb as a noun--metawise, as "the process of
{verb}", and examining the status of the process: punctual, habitual,
unfinished, coming into being, progressive.  [Or maybe you could say it is
looking at the subject?]

Something like "the catll catch the mousell" doesn't seem natural because if I
were to say "The cat'll catch the mouse" in English, I'm talking about a present
cat, a present mouse, and a future catching.  It seems reasonable to mark
"catll" in the future because there's a clear implication that the future cat is
a continuation of the present cat.  But "the mousell" as the object doesn't
imply whether the mouse is a future continuation of some present mouse (as the
English original does) or whether it is some mouse that has yet to come into
being.  I would expect redundancy marking, if nothing else, to prevent both cat
and mouse as being marked future (unless future cats habitually affect present
actions).

Dunamy, my obfuture English, marks verb tense on nouns.

    gäsy-i    a-gä-pa     ar' a-mees
    catch-DIR DEF-cat-FUT NC  DEF-mouse
    "The cat'll catch the mouse"
    /"g{Si @"g{p@ @r@"mE:s/

    pa-gäsy   a-mees-pa     ar' a-gä
    INV-catch DEF-mouse-FUT NC  DEf-cat
    "The mouse'll be caught by the cat"
    /p@"g{S @"mE:sp@ @r@"g{/

(I really need to update my Dunamy page...it's currently the oldest untouched
page on my site[!])


    *Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/