Re: tense marking and typology
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, June 10, 1999, 11:09 |
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At 15:32 09/06/99 CDT, you wrote:
>I'm trying to come up with a pragmatic tense marking system for Asiteya (or
>Astya, both tenetative names, really just the word for "the language"),
>where different word orders mean different tenses. Is there any precedent
>for this? Does it violate typology rules completely to allow SVO, VSO and
>SOV in the same language (even if the language is, admittedly, in intense
>typological flux)?
Just do it! I find that idea really cool (and I think I remember it's not
the first time somebody is talking on this list of using word order to mark
tense).
Also, I would be thrilled if someone could see fit to
>share some info on tense systems other than the usual European
>past-present-future. The rigid distictions of a time-line don't appeal to
>me anymore.
>
My Azak has no tense at all. Instead, it has many modal and aspectual
suffixes like -oj:"hic et nunc" (meaning that the action takes place now
and here), -el: aorist (for stories, but it's not a past tense), -es:
imperative, -un: frequentative (for things that happen regularly), -al:
subjunctive (when you doubt of the reality of what you say), -ef:
subjective (meaning that it's your own point of view). There are 15
suffixes like that (plus the zero-suffix, which means that the modality is
irrelevant, or the process described is eternally true).
My Moten has tenses, but the system is different from European languages,
more like the Basque system. It has three tenses (plus the imperative):
present, past and eventual (if). The future is considered as an aspect or a
modality and is expressed like them with periphrastic constructions.
Well, those were two examples to show you what can be done.
>Thank you,
>Jennifer
>
>
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