Re: THEORY: Temporal Auxiliaries, Aspectual Auxiliaries, Modal Auxiliaries

I was going to combine this with my reply to Tom - but that got a bit long.
  So I'll reply to Max separately.

On Thursday, July 7, 2005, at 03:24 , # 1 wrote:

> Ray Brown wrote:
[snip]
>> No - the French forms with _avoir_ (or _être_, see below) are not so
>> clear cut. Consider _j'ai mangé_; it may mean:
>> - I ate - simple past indicative
>> - I have eaten - present perfect indicative.
>>
>
> Yeah I know that fact, it's true since the "simple past" got out of usage
> in French because that tense where only for progressive past but now, the
> "composite past" carries progressive past and perfect past
Really? Do you mean _j'ai mangé_ can also mean "I was eating" (progressive
past)? Is _je mangeais_ really on its way out? I knew that had happened in
colloquial southern German but I was quite unaware of its happening in
French.

[snip]
>> Just to confuse things, the simple past in English and the French
>> composite past tense does have a perfective meaning. But as Trask says:
>> "NOTE: be careful not to confuse perfective aspect with perfect aspect;
>> they are entirely distinct."
>>
>
> I'd like to know in what they are different.
Please read my reply to Tom - the explanation is a bit long and I see no
point in repeating it.

> I'm sorry, I use these terms but never thought they might mean different
> things...
They mean quite different things. Confusing the two terms is, well,
confusing.    :)

[snip]
>> I agree with perfect aspect and, possibly, future tense. Also with
>> _j'aurais mangé_ the aspect is perfect, not perfective. But we have to
>> remember that _j'aurais_ is the past form of _j'aurai_ (it has the same
>> endings as the imperfect tense),
>
> "j'aurais" et "j'aurai" are not even at the same mode.
That is a matter of controversy.

Trask defines 'conditional' thus:
"A conventional name for certain verb forms occurring in some languages,
notably Romance languages, which typically express some notion of
remoteness, supposition, approximation or implied condition. Semantically,
  the conditional is really a mood, but formally it behaves more like part
of the tense system...."

> May you explain how they could could be forms differienced only by tense?
Formally both the future and the conditional are formed on the same stem
in all French verbs. The future is formed by suffixing forms derived from
the _present_ tense of _avoir_:
aur-ai, aur-as, aur-a, aur-(av)ons, aur-(av)ez, aur-ont.

The conditional is formed by suffixing the same same set of endings as
those added to the 'present stem' to form the imperfect tense (the 'past
of the present'):
aura-ais, aur-ais, aur-ait, aur-ions, aur-iez, aur-aient.

It seems to me that 'il aura' ~ 'il aurait' is remarkably analogous to 'he
will have' ~ 'he would have', where "would" is the past of "will".

It seems to me perfectly reasonable to interpret the stem aur- as carrying
the same _modal_ significance as English "will".

Also the 'conditonal tense' is used not only in conditions but also to
express the 'shifted future' (past of the future) in reported speech:
>> and is used not only in conditions but also to express the "shifted
>> future" just as "would" is used in English:
>> il dit qu'il l'aura mangé  --> il a dit qu'il l'aurait mangé
>> he says he will eat it     --> he said  he would eat it.
>>
>
> I'd rather translate "il dit qu'il l'aura mangé" as "he says he will have
> eaten it" and "il a dit qu'il l'aurait mangé" as "he said he would have
> eaten it",
Yes, sorry - I wrote this when I was tired and forgot to make the darn
things perfect. Yep, it should be:
he says he will have eaten
he says he would have eaten.  (shifted future perfect)

> The equivalents for "he says he will eat it" and "he said he would eat it"
>  would rather be "il dit qu'il va le manger" and "il a dit qu'il le
> mangerais"
Future tense also died out? Is 'il le mangera' no longer used?

In the French I learnt 50 years ago it would have been:
il dit qu'il le mangera --> il a dit qu'il le mangerait
he says he will eat it  --> he said he would eat it
and
il dit qu'il va le manger --> il a dit qu'il allait le manger
he says he's going to eat it --> he said he was going to eat it

> In that case of "shifted future with will-would changing it's made by
> using "simple futur with "will" and "present conditionnal" with would
>
>> I will say no more than that it could be argued that the stem aur-
>> denotes _irrealis_ mood  :)
>>
>
> Isn't indicative realis?
Yes, but I said _irrealis_ - that's the negative form of 'realis'   :)

> Because "I will have eaten", "j'aurai mangé"("future antérieur", perfect(
> ive?) future) is indicative and realis because it is a fact, I anounce
> that I will have eaten at some moment
>
> For subjonctive, yes, aur- is on an irrealis conjugation but since it is
> also for simple futur it can't be said that it marks that it is irrealis
The future ain't real - it's a set of probabilities.

>> [snip]
>>> (It occurred to me after my original post that the participle used in
>>> French's passe' compose' might be not an active participle but a past
>>> participle.
>>
>> It is in fact the _perfect passive_ participle.
>>
>
> The name is really the "past participle" but I think that it is only
> perfect but not passive
>
> Like in "j'ai mangé", "mangé" is not passive because it has a passive
> form: "j'ai été mangé"
It is passive - that's why it has to have the extra -e in: j'ai la mangée
<-- *(ego) habeo illam manducatam.

>
>>> English's participles are best distinguished as passive
>>> vs. active, but I don't know that that's true for French.)
>>
>> Exactly the same. If however French uses the perfect _active_ participle
>> then the auxiliary _must_ be être and not avoir; also the participle
>> must agree with the subject:
>> je suis venu = I came; I have come
>>
>> If I were female, then I should write _je suis venue_.
>>
>
> I don't think it has anything to do with activeness-passiveness, it is
> simply that some verbs take the "être" auxiliary but the majority "avoir"
> , "venir" simply is one of those who takes "être"
Don't you?

If you read what I wrote carefully, you will see that I did not say that
if the verb is transitive then use 'avoir' and if it is intransitive then
use 'être'. That is however how the constructions began life in Vulgar
Latin. But over the ages the origin has been forgotten and 'avoir' has
gained ground (tho not to the exclusion of 'être', unlike Spanish where
_haber_ is now the only perfect auxiliary).

But if the verb does form its perfect tenses with être then the participle
is clearly active since, quite logically, it agrees with the subject: nous
sommes venus.

> But that part of the post is the one I'm the less sure of.. I've never
> read about a distinction of English participles as active or passive,
> I've always tought that a participle is active unless being used with
> "been" like "eaten"-"been eaten"
Strictly passive, tho when used with 'have' to form the active perfect
tenses this is irrelevant as our adjectives no longer show agreement; thus
in "I have seen her" at one time in English (many, many centuries ago)
'seen' agreed with her. The English construction & similar forms in other
Germanic languages were calques of Vulgar Latin forms like 'illam visam
habeo'.

But what I meant was that when the so-called 'past participle' is used
adjectively then the meaning is always passive if the verb is transitive,
but active if the verb is intransitive, e.g.
- the felled word  = that tree which has been felled = l'arbre qui a été
abattu (passive);
- the fallen tree = the tree that has fallen = l'arbre qui est tombé
(active)

(PS - I know that some will say 'fallen' is middle, not passive.
Semantically that is correct; but that is to do with _diathesis_ - the
relation between the semantic roles of the verbal arguments and the
grammatical roles. Neither English nor French has a morphologically
defined middle voice. Voice is a _grammatical_ category and the two
languages only active and passive as grammatical voice categories.)

Ray
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