tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 03 21:59:19 2000
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Aspect vs. Tense (was Re: KliFlash)
ja' "Jason Stokes" <[email protected]>:
>It's not *that* exotic. English expresses aspect through a number of modal
>verbs like "will", "gonna", "have" etc.
"Will" is usually associated with future tense, not any sort of aspect.
>It's not a case of choosing "aspect" *over* tense. Aspect is a semantic
>feature.
In Klingon, as in many languages, aspect is a grammatical feature.
>Tense is a grammatical feature which is related to, but not
>identical with, aspect.
Tense and aspect are usually conceptually unrelated. Tense says when
an action occurs: before now, now, or after now. Aspect describes how
an action appears: continuing/progressing or completed/accomplished in
Klingon, with other possibilities like unstarted or beginning or ending
in other languages.
>For example: "Tomorrow we die." Present tense, future aspect.
There's no such thing as "future aspect". Future describes only tense.
Some languages confuse the concepts and use nominally aspectual grammar
to imply tense or vice versa, but in your example there is no confusion
at all. "Tomorrow we die" is grammatically present tense with a future
context. It has no explicit aspect, which in English often implies the
action is a simple one-time event.
-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh