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The Alurhsa Word for Constructed: Creativity in both scripts and languages
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Tolkien_Freak
Joined: 26 Jul 2007
Posts: 1231
Location: in front of my computer. always.
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 Posted: Sun Nov 02, 2008 1:39 am Post subject: |
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| Sounds like perfective aspect... |
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eldin raigmore
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Joined: 03 May 2007
Posts: 1621
Location: SouthEast Michigan
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 8:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Tolkien_Freak wrote: | | Sounds like perfective aspect... |
Not to me; it sounds like "present perfect" instead of "(simple) past".
In other words, it sounds like "retrospective" -- an event completed in the past but whose effects are still relevant in the present.
Semantically it's often related to "recent past", since the more recent something was the likelier its effects are to still be relevant, and the more relevant it still is the likelier it is to have been recent.
I know we've discussed this before, in particular on the ZBB (which I miss), but I'll repeat it anyway:
"Perfect" and "perfective" are not the same thing, and may not even be related in some languages.
"Retrospective" (aka "perfect") tends to be a tense in tense-prominent languages, an aspect in aspect-prominent languages, and a mood in mood-prominent languages.
IMO it's mostly a mood cross-linguistically, because it tells the speaker's attitude towards the event; namely, the speaker believes the event is still relevant.
Some, though, call it a tense nearly always (cross-linguistically), because they think it's about time, and by them anything about time should be called a tense.
But I think, whenever it is an aspect, or to the degree that it is an aspect, it probably would be, as you've said, a perfective one.
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Anyway:
"eaten" is the (passive, or perfective, or past) participle;
"have eaten" and "be eaten" are the retrospective (or "perfect") forms.
Participles can have aspects, modalities/modes/moods, polarities, tenses, and/or voices; it depends on the language. They may have the same system as finite verbs, or they may not.
In English, many verbs have two participles.
Transitive verbs may have an active participle and a passive participle; the active participle ends with "-ing" and the passive one ends with "-en" or "-ed", often.
Some verbs in English may have an imperfective participle and a perfective participle; the imperfective ends with "-ing" and the perfective with "-en" or "-ed" or similar.
Som verbs in English may have a present participle and a past participle; the present ends with "-ing" and the past with "-en" or "-ed".
As you can see by the English example, not all the conceptually-different forms of a participle need to actually look or sound different, even if the corresponding forms of a finite verb do.
English progressive aspect, which is an imperfective aspect, is formed by a form of the verb "to be" + the "-ing" participle (present or imperfective or active).
The difference between English's active participle and its passive one may not be exactly what I said earlier; for instance, consider the difference between "was eaten" and "had eaten". Passive is "was eaten", active is "had eaten"; the difference is in the auxiliary verb ("to be" for passive, "to have" for active), not in the participle "eaten".
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Anyway:
Would our O.P. (Hemicomputer) like his 'lang to have:
Verbal adjectives (participles, gerundives, what else?)
Verbal nouns? (infinitives?, gerunds?, masdars?, supines?)
Verbal adverbs? (supines?)
Note that a "verbal X" is usually a non-finite form of the verb. It usually doesn't inflect for everything the finite verb inflects for; in particular it may not inflect for agreement with everything the finite verb agrees with, such as the subject (in some languages), in particular the subject's number and/or person and/or gender. In languages whose finite verbs have polypersonal agreement (agreeing with both the subject and (at least one of) the object(s)), non-finite verb-forms may not agree with an object when a finte verb would. Also, for instance, infinitives (and sometimes other non-finite verb-forms) in many familiar languages don't have tense, even though all those languages' finite verbs do have tense.
But a "verbal X" still has some properties that verbs have and most "X" don't. For instance, maybe it has (or at least can have) a subject. Or, maybe it has (or at least can have) an object.
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So anyway I'd (we'd?) be interested in the verbal nouns, verbal adjectives, and verbal adverbs of your language. (Not every language has all of them, of course; for instance I don't think English has any "verbal adverbs".)
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[EDIT]: BTW somewhere on the Conlang-L list is a discussion about a member's wish to have a different system of voices for his/her conlang's participles than for his/her conlang's finite verbs. He began by explaining the conlang's system of voices for finite verbs, then explaining the semantics and meanings of the distinction he wanted to make in his participles, then asking what to call that difference. The conclusion several other members recommended was that that difference was a difference in voice, and that it was perfectly OK that the voices of his participles weren't split up exactly the same way as the voices of his finite verbs. (In fact they were very different).
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Tolkien_Freak
Joined: 26 Jul 2007
Posts: 1231
Location: in front of my computer. always.
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| Posted: Mon Nov 03, 2008 10:43 pm Post subject: |
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| eldin raigmore wrote: | I know we've discussed this before, in particular on the ZBB (which I miss), but I'll repeat it anyway:
"Perfect" and "perfective" are not the same thing, and may not even be related in some languages. |
Pleh - I did mean perfect. *hits self*
I should know since my last lang had both, and they were unrelated.
Pretty much, participles are adjectives formed from verbs. Perfect and perfective are verbal aspects. It sounds like what you have is perfect aspect (yes, perfect, NOT perfective) + present tense, unless you form some tenses periphrastically like English ('I have eaten' is literally 'I am having eaten' or something). |
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yssida
Joined: 16 Sep 2007
Posts: 253
Location: sa jaan lang
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| Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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| yssida wrote: | | I get it. Your language doesn't distinguish stops from fricatives? |
that was a stupid comment..
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Hemicomputer
Joined: 04 Feb 2008
Posts: 610
Location: Calgary, Alberta
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| Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 11:26 pm Post subject: |
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| yssida wrote: | | yssida wrote: | | I get it. Your language doesn't distinguish stops from fricatives? |
that was a stupid comment.. |
The vast majority of my original "phonology" was also pretty stupid, so no worries. |
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