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Re: Further language development Q's

From:Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...>
Date:Monday, September 20, 2004, 22:03
> "Telebistan lan egiten dut > Telebista-n lan egin-ten du-t > Television-LOC work make-(simple? I forget...) > pres.transitive.3rd.ABS-1st.ERG > > "Simple present"? Would that be equivalent to the English progressive, > since > the English "present" is actually a habitual aspect? Or maybe something > totally different? >
In basque, the auxilliary tends to mark tense (past vs non-past), mode (there are subjunctive, conditional, possibilitative etc auxilliaries), and person agreement (with Actor, Patient and Recipient), and the main verb form (the infinitive) takes aspect markers. I think, but I haven't practiced in a while (a few days, but I haven't been learning that long) so I might be getting confused, that "egiten" is the "simple" form (whose proper name I can't remember... corresponding roughly when used with a present tense auxilliary to the english simple present tense). Another example is the ending -ko, which is often analysed as a future tense marker, but which I was reading (an argument by Larry Trask I believe) is actually more like "unrealised" (it can occur with past tense auxilliaries etc). An example of this is: joango zara joan-go zara go-FUT/UNREALISED pres.intrans.2nd you will go I find the way the TAM information is split between the main verb and auxilliary quite interesting in Basque. :) I just looked it up in a basque grammar online... the aspect markers a verb can take are: perfective imperfective unrealized However, there is also an (explicitly) progressive construction involving the use of a word "ari" which I counted as a progressive marking along the same lines as those listed above, even though it is a construction rather than a single suffix on the main verb as is the case with the other three.. so I guess I started thinking of the imperfective marking as mainly habitual in nature, thus giving rise to the confusion over what to call it (I couldn't decide whether to call it "simple" or not by analogy with the English simple present tense... it would have been easier to label it habitual or something anyway even if it wasn't in fact an imperfective marker). The Basque verbal system in its entirety is really amazing.... I've never learned any other language which has so much TAM information and person agreement compulsarily marked.

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Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...>Basque Gender Marking (was Re: Further language development Q's)