Interesting features in your conlang

[Makri]

1. Well, yes, the inference from typological non-existence to unaquireability is pretty Chomskian, I admit that. Of course, if it is the language of a different species, that's perfectly fine.

2. I see. That would be somehow reinterpreting the system as based on simple tenses. But if you do that, the system loses almost all of its speciality. On the other hand, I just realized that there isn't really a problem with having temporal adverbs refer to the runtime of the event, anyway. All the tense morphology does is give you an interval - and you have to relate the runtime of the event to that interval. There is no problem with independently saying things about that runtime (with adverbs).

[eSOANEM]

I see. That would be somehow reinterpreting the system as based on simple tenses. But if you do that, the system loses almost all of its speciality. On the other hand, I just realized that there isn't really a problem with having temporal adverbs refer to the runtime of the event, anyway. All the tense morphology does is give you an interval - and you have to relate the runtime of the event to that interval. There is no problem with independently saying things about that runtime (with adverbs).

I don't think I'd want a situation where it was the norm to use temporal adverbs, as you say, that would make the system lose most of its specialness; I was imagining a situation where such adverbs would be used solely when precision is needed and the rest of the time to use the tenspect system. If this (temporal adverbs shifting the temporal focus) were the case though then the tenspect affixes would essentially become affixes for various degrees of (a)symmetric (im)perfectiveness and a fairly system tense+aspect system.

In order to try and keep the specialness of the tenspect system, I think it might be better if, instead of the adverbs shifting the temporal focus, they just provide a point in time at which the action was taking place (so any point between the beginning and end), that way the adverb adds clarification without turning it into a tense+aspect system.

[Makri]

Actually, I don't see at all what's aspectual about this system. It's purely a tense system, as far as I can see.

Using adverbs only when precision is needed is pretty much what all languages do, isn't it? Having adverbs shift the temporal center (i.e. the present) would retain much of the specialness of the system - in that it would be very different from what is found in human languages. You could, for instance, express "before Monday" as "past-V-past Monday". Something of a problem arises because adverbs don't necessarily specify points in time, but often intervals (such as "Monday"). The question is what happens if you center on an interval. What does "past-V-future Monday" mean? I think it should mean "did (or will do) on Monday", because otherwise you don't have a way to express that. But it's a bit tricky to make all this precise and not loose the systematicity.

Obviously, since tense is by default interpreted with respect to the present, but otherwise with respect to adverbs, you can't use tense to draw inferences on the temporal location of that Monday. You might want to introduce morphemes (possibly as part of the determiner system, which may be suffixal or not) that localize it. Things like "last, next, one before last, one before next", and also possible indefinites that just mean "future" and "past".

Another thing that would have to be worked out is what happens with multiple temporal adverbs.

[eSOANEM]

Actually, I don't see at all what's aspectual about this system. It's purely a tense system, as far as I can see.

Using adverbs only when precision is needed is pretty much what all languages do, isn't it? Having adverbs shift the temporal center (i.e. the present) would retain much of the specialness of the system - in that it would be very different from what is found in human languages. You could, for instance, express "before Monday" as "past-V-past Monday". Something of a problem arises because adverbs don't necessarily specify points in time, but often intervals (such as "Monday"). The question is what happens if you center on an interval. What does "past-V-future Monday" mean? I think it should mean "did (or will do) on Monday", because otherwise you don't have a way to express that. But it's a bit tricky to make all this precise and not loose the systematicity.

Obviously, since tense is by default interpreted with respect to the present, but otherwise with respect to adverbs, you can't use tense to draw inferences on the temporal location of that Monday. You might want to introduce morphemes (possibly as part of the determiner system, which may be suffixal or not) that localize it. Things like "last, next, one before last, one before next", and also possible indefinites that just mean "future" and "past".

Another thing that would have to be worked out is what happens with multiple temporal adverbs.

Yeah, you're right. I was thinking of it as defining a degree of perfectiveness, but the tenspect forms, even with shift-focus adverbs would still be a primarily tense system.

past-v-future Monday would literally mean starting before Monday and ending after it. The way round this problem seems to me to not allow any adverbs to count as intervals so, instead of Monday it would be "noon on Monday" or something along those lines, this way, past-V-past Monday would mean early Monday rather than Tuesday as well.

Indeed. At the least I'll need either separate forms for "last Monday" and "next Monday" or determiners specifying "last", "next" etc. I think what would be most interesting/realistic would be to have the determiners but to have irregular forms for certain common adverbs.

[Makri]

Actually, "Monday" could mean "a time on Monday". It does that in natural languages, too. So "past-V-future Monday" would mean "there is a time t on Monday, and that is the center of past-V-future". The whole action could easily have taken place on Monday. And possibly, by implicature, it would be understood that way, because otherwise, what would have been the point of centering specifically on Monday?

On the other hand, if you allows "past-V-past Monday" to mean "early on Monday", then you kind of lose the idea that adverbs effect temporal centering. I think "past-V-past Monday" should mean "V by Monday", but of course, that's problematic with the existential idea from above. I can't think of a way to solve that right now.

[eSOANEM]

Yeah, you're right again. Having the adverb being "a time in interval X" is best. This does raise ambiguities with the two -past tenspects (likewise the two future- tenspects) although I think they'd be best resolved by declaring them to mean "by Monday" and "after Monday" respectively.

[davedrowsy]

I'm surprised this thread isn't more active! Conlanging is such a fascinating hobby.

An idea I've had is to use tense modification for nouns instead of verbs. It makes sense in a weird way. To represent an idea like "The dog ate the cat," rather than saying "the dog eats(past) the cat," you would say "the dog(past) eats the cat(past)" -- in other words "that dog of the past ate that cat of the past," with the past tense "ate" being implied out of translation to English.

A benefit of doing this would be that you can more easily represent concepts that might be wordier to disambiguate otherwise, such as "the Latin language, in the state it used to be in the past," or "my deceased mother (may she rest in peace)," or "the sandwich I ate yesterday," and so on and so forth. It also lends itself towards mixing and matching past and present tense nouns, in order to easily convey sentences like "Gustave Eiffel(past) created the Eiffel Tower(present)(that we know and love today)," as opposed to some other (fictional) Eiffel Tower that is no longer existent, or perhaps not currently memorable or widely known. You would use the past tense for nouns you want to describe as being in the past, implying that at some point they either died, were destroyed, faded into obscurity, etc. Or you could even use the past tense to describe a past state of something, like "myself, back in my foolish adolescent years," implying that at some point you ceased to be that person that you used to be. If you went that route, assuming you haven't changed much in the last week, you would actually use the present tense when describing something you did yesterday (for example, "yesterday, I-present-tense eat a sandwich-past-tense"). Using the present tense with nouns would imply that they do currently exist in a readily apparent state. I suppose for intangible ideas like "love," one would use the present tense, unless the speaker is dramatically suggesting that love no longer exists.

Think I might use this idea for my next conlang!

[Derek]

I could imagine such a feature being very useful for time travel.

[Voekoevaka]

I could imagine such a feature being very useful for time travel.

That's reminds me H2G2's second volume, when the only things which have suffered from time travel is conjugation...

In my case, I have created several conlangs, and my favorite is called Kzusho Gseyshooshvoejoo (translation : where I come from is where you'll be).
It don't use any verb, any noun or adjective, but it is made of expressions that are part of an action, linked together to make sense.

Another conlang I made is based on a totally different method, and the name I give to it is Mead zat mead hann (translation : this is how you say no, this is how you say yes).