Re: Noun and noun or noun

I wrote:

>> My current conlang, Tokana, can sorta kinda make this distinction
>> as well, but only in the past tense.  There are two different past
>> tense forms in Tokana, which I call the "simple past" and the
>> "aorist".  The aorist picks out one specific event which occurred
>> at a particular time in the past, whereas the simple past does not
>> pick out any specific event, and can thus in principle be used to
>> refer to multiple events.
And Joshua asked:

>Is there a present-tense or future-tense analog of the aorist past, in Tokana
>or linguistics in general?
I don't know about natlangs.  There is a contrast in the present tense which
is similar to, but not quite the same as, the past/aorist contrast in the
past tense:  Tokana distinguishes a simple present tense (usually called
"simple") and a present progressive tense (usually called "present"):  The
latter is used to denote an event which is going on at the moment of
speaking, while the former is used to denote habitual, generic, or
'timeless' events:

        Na Tsion ukiasyin       "John is eating (now)"
        Na Tsion ukiasa         "John eats (in general)"

When the subject is singular, a verb in the present progressive must
necessarily refer to a single event, while the simple present refers to
multiple events:

        Na Tsion iasyin upam    "John is eating an apple" OR
                                "John is eating some apples"

        Na Tsion iasa upam      "John eats apples"

Matt.

------------------------------------
Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
------------------------------------