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

Hi Tom,
Here's the copy for the list, as requested. Let's see what yahoo mail
does with it. A reply on my part will have to wait a bit.

Jeff

-------------------------------------------------
--- tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...> wrote:
Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2005 21:30:23 -0000
From: "tomhchappell" <tomhchappell@...>
To: Jeffrey Jones <jsjonesmiami@...>
Subject: Re: THEORY: Temporal Auxiliaries, Aspectual Auxiliaries,
Modal Auxiliaries

Hello, Jeff. Thanks for writing.

I don't know why the lines didn't wrap.
I have "wrap message text" checked on my box here in Yahoo.
Maybe that just means that Yahoo makes the lines look wrapped to
me, whether they really are, or not.

In replying to you, I came up with 13
(yes, that's right, thirteen) more questions.

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Jeffrey Jones <jsjonesmiami@Y...>
> wrote:
> [snip]
> In a couple of my conlang projects, I have a marker that makes
> any content verb into an auxiliary (if it makes sense). I don't
> know if I'll have any non-content auxiliaries. This mechanism
> handles tense and mood auxiliaries, evidentials and attitudinals,
> and some other stuff, but not aspectual auxiliaries, which are
> handled using the compounding mechanism.
That's great! That would be something I'd like to see.
May I?  Where and/or how?

> [snip]
> > 4) Does anyone know of any NatLang examples with prevalent
> > Aspectual Auxiliaries?
>
> How about these:
>
> "He stopped running."  "Keep going."  "It's starting to rain."
Very good.  I think I should have thought of these.
That's pretty prevalent, alright, in English.
Thanks.

> Note: I'm quoting the whole message because archived version
> doesn't line-wrap!
> [snip]
> > 8) In the above cases, what part of speech is the "content word"
> > usually?
Notice in your examples that the "content word" is a de-verbal
adjective or a de-verbal noun -- either a participle, or an
infinitive, or a gerund.

[NEW QUESTIONS: DEVERBAL NOUNS AND DEVERBAL ADJECTIVES]

[DEVERBAL NOUNS]
N1) How many kinds of DeVerbal Nouns are their cross-linguistically?
N2) Are there others besides gerunds, infinitives, and supines?
N3) What is a supine, anyway?
N4) An "agentive" noun --- what's the right way to say that?

[DEVERBAL ADJECTIVES]
N5) Is every DeVerbal Adjective a Participle?
N6) Is the biggest difference between Participles Voice (Passive vs
Active)?
N7) Is there a real Aspectual difference between Participles (Perfect

vs Imperfect) over and above the Voice difference?
N8) Is there a real Tense difference between Participles (Past vs
Present) over and above the Voice and/or Aspect difference?

[BACK TO ORIGINAL TOPIC]
N9) In my original question 8), is the "content word" always or
almost always one that could best be, or would have to be, translated

as a deverbal noun or deverbal adjective, if not a verb, in any
language in which the entire phrase existed as a non-analytic lexical

verb?

[INFINITE VS FINITE VERBS AND UNTENSED VS TENSED VERBS]
An "infinite" form of a verb is, classically, one which does not
have to agree with any of its participants (a subject or one or more
objects or both) in number, person, or gender.
A "finite" form, on the other hand, is one which must agree with
some participant (a subject or one or more objects or both) in number
or person or gender.
Technically speaking, then, "classical infinitives" could have a
tense, aspect, voice, and mood specified.
Classically, then, many uses of English verbs are "infinite" forms
of the verb in question, although we are not taught to regard them
as "infinitives".
Mostly we think of non-tensed, non-"aspected" verbs when we think
of "infinite" verbs in English.
This is probably incorrect, at least cross-linguistically; several
languages allow "infinite" verbs -- in the sense of not having the
person, nor number, nor gender of any argument nailed down -- to
have their tense and/or aspect specified.
On the other hand, there may also be languages in which a verb may
be used in a way that has all of its participants fully specified as
to person, number, and gender, but does not have its Tense nor its
Aspect specified.

N10) Can anyone give me examples of Tensed Infinite Verbs?
I prefer multiple different forms in the same natural language, for
multiple different languages; but any example at all will count as
a contribution.

N11) Can anyone give me examples of Finite Untensed Verbs?
I prefer multiple different forms in the same natural language, for
multiple different languages; but any example at all will count as
a contribution.

Note that even an Infinite or Untensed verb can still have its Mood
and Voice specified.  In fact, I am not sure how much sense it
makes to call anything with an unspecified voice a Verb.  If the
Voice is open to question, then maybe it's a de-verbal Noun or
Adjective or Adverb or Adposition or something.

[DOES THE NOTION OF "VOCAL AUXILIARY" EVEN MAKE SENSE?]
I conjecture that there exist no natural languages in which it is
grammatical for auxiliary-verb-and-lexical-verb constructions to be
uttered in which the grammatical voice can vary in a way which can
and must be marked on the auxiliary verb but cannot and must not be
marked on the lexical verb.
N12) Does anyone know of a counter-example?
I conjecture that the idea of a "Voice" auxiliary -- an auxiliary
verb in an aux&lex construction whose main purpose for inclusion
was to carry the marking-for-voice that wasn't going to be carried on
the main verb -- doesn't even make sense.
N13) Does anyone know of, or can anyone come up with, a proof or
disproof?

NOMINALS VS VERBALS]
Some linguists have proposed that the fundamental division between
Nominals and Verbals is this:
Nominals denote whatever must be bounded in Space;
Verbals denote whatever must be bounded in Time.

> [snip]
-----

Thank you for writing, Jeff.
I (clearly) found your remarks thought-provoking, to say the least.

Thanks, ahead of time, to anyone who has any comment to make
about any of these questions, or any of the previous questions,
on this thread.

-----

Tom H.C. in MI




		
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