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off-topic: new Esperanto tense proposal
- From: MorphemeAddict@hidden.email
- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:43:44 EST
- Subject: off-topic: new Esperanto tense proposal
- To: saweli@yahoogroups.com
My proposal concerns expressing aspects of verbs without expressing tense.
Esperanto verbs can be in three tenses (past, present, future), a conditional, a volitive/imperative/volitional/subjective, and infinitive.
There is no established way to express in Esperanto a finite verb without using one of the first five of the options mentioned above. Only infinitives do not take subjects. And only infinitives do not express either a tense or some other nuance.
Some languages, though, use aspect without expressing tense at all in their verb systems, and Esperanto has no direct way to express that. However, Esperanto does have three participles, which according to the itisma/aspektisma school of thought are used to express aspect.
My proposal is to use either the infinitive or a new verbal tense suffix "-ES", with the explicit meaning of "tenseless", "no tense implied or expressed", along with the participles to indicate untensed aspectual use of verbs. The meaning of "-ES" would *not* be "for all time", "at any time". The suffix would explicitly deny any tense information at all.
An example:
Mi amanti (or amantes) = I (be in a state of) loving
The language I'm most familiar with that has aspect but no tense is Klingon.
jISov = mi scies (or) mi scii
jISovtaH = mi sciantes (or) mi scianti
jISovpu' = mi sciintes (or) mi sciinti
N.B.: Klingon has no counterpart of the future participles, so these have no direct examples.
Using "-ES" would (possibly) allow conflating an _expression_ such as "amas, amis, amos" into one form: ames.
This new suffix "-ES" or the use of the infinitive with a subject could open up new ways of thinking in Esperanto.