Re: Using Case to Show Tense

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 15:52:41 -0500, Edward Miller <sewerbird@...> wrote:

> In ending, I would also appreciate suggestions on introducing aspect
> into this system: my design goal for the inflectional aspect (pardon
> the pun) of the language is to indicate as much information about the
> verb as possible on its nouns, without making the nouns look like
> Y'upik Eskimo.... I've grouped two sets of aspects, paired into three.
> My current task is to alter the tense system above somehow to indicate
> aspect too. I may instead put person marking on the verb and show
> aspect through that: so many options!
>
> Group 1
> Imperfective
> Inceptive
> Progressive
>
> Group 2
> Perfective
> Completive
> Perfect
Since tense is expressed through case, maybe aspect could be expressed
through voice!

[Thinking out loud...]

Say we took the switched system like so:

>Tense           S     A     P
>Past             p      n     p
>Present        n      a     p
>Future          a      a     n
And then specified the following voices:

PASS: Noun in role P given the S case if it doesn't already, noun in
role A demoted to some oblique case (instrumental maybe).
APASS: Noun in role A given the S case, noun in role P demoted to some
oblique case (dative, say).

And then we require that PASS be used with the perfect and APASS with
the progressive (from analogy with the tenses).  (Intransitives are
tricky -- can't really use PASS or APASS with an intransitive.  I'd
say add a reflexive marker on the verb and introduce the
"my/your/himself" dummy patient, then add the voice.)  We then get the
following tense/aspect chart:

                       S     A     P
PAST               p     n     p
PAST PERF            i      p
PAST PROG           p     d
PRES              n     a     p
PRES PERF           i      n
PRES PROG          n     d
FUT                 a     a     p
FUT PERF              i      a
FUT PROG             a     d

If word order is strict, you could give up the instrumental and dative
in favor of a catch-all oblique case without sacrificing the
deducibility of this system.  This would also be possible with
free-word order and voice-affixes on the verb.  (But then the
listeners could deduce aspect *just* from the verb rather than the
nouns, too.)

I wonder what would happen when a speaker *actually* needed to use
passive voice?  I'd have to think about this one for a bit...

Anyway, there's one idea.  Have fun!

> On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 12:50:27 +0100, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
> > Patrick: you should give the name of the original poster ('twas Edward).
My apologies; sometimes I'm a little too hasty with the quote-snipping.

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