Re: Tense formations

Jesse Bangs eskrë »

> > (strong verb)             (weak verb)
> > to give  yiben            to love  liuben      (infinitive)
> > I give   me yib           I love   me liub     (present)
> > I gave   me yeb           I loved  me liubta   (imperfect)
>
> I don't think that imperfect is the right term for this one.  Imperfect
> indicates an ongoing, non-momentary action, usually in the past,
> translated in English as "I was doing" or "I used to do."  What you have
> here would probably be called the "preterite" in traditional grammar.
Ah. That confirms something I also received in a mail offlist. I think the
problem is that I learnt the grammatical terms when learning French at 10
[er, film at 11] and when we started on German at age 12 we were never
taught terms like 'preterite'.

> > I have given it       me yibave iet         (perfect)
> > It was given by me    et wä yeban ük ime    (yeban: past participle)
>
> Here again, past participle is inappropriate.  The form used in English
> here is the past participle, but the Jameld form seems to indicate only
> passive, not past.  Is this form used in any past constructions, or only
> in the passive?  If it's not used in the past, I would call it the
> passive participle.
This is all still assembling itself, but no, it's not used in any past
constructions in Modern Jameld (although it was in Old/Middle Jameld, say up
to the 16th C., just as it still is *here* in German, Dutch, Frisian,
English etc). So maybe technically it is now the [past] passive participle,
but *was* the past participle generally. Thanks for your comments on this:
describing grammar has never been my strong point.

In looking at this, and considering my list of irregular verbs last night, I
was thinking that some of the forms would probably never be used: the
passive participle of verbs like die, exist, stink etc. Likewise, I have
trouble visualizing how the past participle of Norwegian verbs like måtte,
skulle, ville etc (cognate with must, shall, will) would ever be used, even
though they get listed in irreg verb lists.

James

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