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Hi Steve! I like your approach. "-es" even really looks available to me, even though it has been used for tablewords like "kies". The use of -int-, -ant- and -ont- with -i looks nice, too, since they imply "esti", which ? as you want it ? doesn't imply tense. But then we would need to distinguish ordinary i-forms from this new form. Like * Mi voli sciin, kiu vi esti. Sentences like * Lerni Esperanton esti facile. would be confusing and would need to be substituted with * Lerno Esperanton esti facila. Too big a change! So I'd stick with "-es". On the other hand, simply "-as" already fulfills the tensless-ness you're looking for. As in "krokodilo estas besto", because a crocodile has been, is and will always be an animal. Also in this sentence: "mi pensis ke vi estas lia amiko" ? "estas" is referring to the past. This is why I also wanted to let it have another suffix, like "estis", which is not correct in Esperanto. So I also came up with "-es". Now we could put these cases together using "-es", what do you think? * Mi pensis ke vi estes lia amiko. * Krokodilo estes besto. cf. the grammatically but not used sentence: * Mi pensis vin esti lia amiko. * Oni opinias krokodilon esti besto. Amike, Stefo / Stephan --- In saweli@yahoogroups.com, MorphemeAddict@... wrote: > > 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. >