Tense

[Koontz John E]

On Fri, 4 Apr 2003, Henning Garvin wrote:
> I have a small question that regards tense in Ho-Chunk and Siouan in
> general.  Most of the literature that I have gone through (and I could have
> somehow missed it) doesn't give tense a very strong treatment.

I'll just chime in that I agree with others that verbs in the Siouan
languages seem to be primarily marked for aspect, along with that irrealis
marker usually glossed as future.  Tense is introduced when sentences are
glossed in English, because English does have tense marking. There's
really nothing that corresponds to past vs. present in Dhegiha, though
there are some enclitics in Omaha-Ponca glossed 'in the past' and there
are time adverbs like 'now' and 'then'.  The forms glossed 'then' usually
work out to be demonstratives with various enclitic postpositions and
don't mean so much 'in the past' but 'at some indicated time'.  There are
terms for 'today', 'tomorrow', etc.

Actually, I think tense-based systems are a bit rare, though I'm certainly
not an authority on typology!

Tense marking is secondary in Indo-European.  The oldest languages attest
an earlier set of distinctions based on aspect (simple, continuous,
perfect) and mood (real/unreal), sometimes with a fused temporal adverb
(?) - the augment.  Very Siouan in general concept, if not in detail.
IE perfects and some present formations involve reduplication.

Most of the subfamilies have a veneer of tense marking achieved by fusing
an auxiliary verb to a verb root to form a past or future (Germanic weak
verb pasts in dentals like English -ed, Latin imperfects and futures in
-b-), usually resulting in two or three way aspect distinctions in the
past" (including an innovated imperfect or past continuous) vs. a single
present (the old continuous) and a single present (innovated or an old
modal form).  Some aspectual and mood formations of PIE date are probably
of similar auxiliary origins (sigmatic or -s- aorists, -yV- desideratives,
etc.).

Most of the modern European IE languages have extensive more recently
innovated auxiliary systems for future (always a bit modal), progressive
and perfect.  Because the histories of the languages and their writing
systems extend far enough back to reveal the basis of these systems the
auxiliaries are often written as independent words, even though they are
actually phonologically as reduced and fused with the main verb as the
comparable markers in the ancient languages (or modern Siouan languages).

Russian and other Eastern Slavic languages (not sure about the Western and
Southern Slavic languages) have reworked thing to produce a new
aspect-heavy situation (with all verb stems having a past and a present or
a past and a future, depending on their basic aspect).

(This summary should give just about everyone on the lista chance to
correct me on something!)

JEK