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Re: [saweli] Re: off-topic: new Esperanto tense proposal

In a message dated 2009-01-29 07:49:49 Eastern Standard Time, stefichjo@hidden.email writes:


Hi Steve!


Stefo!  Privet!  Zol!

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.


This doesn't really give enough context to see how the other, tensed, forms would be inappropriate.  (I've never seen accusative "-n" (ak-no?) on an infinitive before.  I'm not sure I like it, being naturally conservative about things that already work.  I do like "na" for showing accusatives that can't take ak-no).


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".

I am still not convinced that verb-based nouns, such as "lerno", should be able to take an object, but requiring an extra word ("de") between them is annoying, too.


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.

"-as" is used as you say, but that just means it's used badly, or is overused, or that this use is not well considered.  A timeless tense may very well be a better way to say these things, thus making explicit what was hidden there before.  I always prefer disambiguation to ambiguity and confusion.  


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".

The past time of "estas" in your example is indicated by the tense and sense of "pensis".  To reword the example to "X pensis ke Y dormas", presumably Y was actually sleeping at the time when X was thinking the thought, so "dormas" is accurately given in the present tense.  I would not expect to see "-es" used in this kind of situation any more often than it would be used in any other kind of situation.

Now we could put these cases together using "-es", what do you think?

* Mi pensis ke vi estes lia amiko.
* Krokodilo estes besto.

Nouns are tenseless too, but I don't see how to incorporate that into a sentence without another tense indicated somewhere (or "-es").  
In "krokodilo estes besto" the sense is that of always being true, which perhaps should have a yet another ending (although what it would be, I don't know, since the other "-Vs" possibilities are all taken.  But as you've indicated at the beginning, this sense of always being applicable is already served by the present tense "-as".  My proposal for "-es" as a tenseless tense, so to speak, means that there would be no implication whatsoever of tense, and so it would be inappropriate, I think, to use "-es" in this kind of situation.

cf. the grammatically but not used sentence:

* Mi pensis vin esti lia amiko.
* Oni opinias krokodilon esti besto.

These sentences are, indeed, grammatical.  I believe these are examples of elision. Thus "esti" is simply left out with no loss of meaning.  The second one may be a good example of using a noun as a tenseless indicator of the timelessness of the relationship indicated.  I don't see a way to generalize the pattern to other situations, though.

I would expect "-es" to be used mostly with the aspect markers (ant/int/ont).  
Mi mortigantes lin.  = I (at an unspecified time) be in the process or middle of killing him.
Mi mortigintes lin.  = I (at an unspecified time) have completed the action of killing him.
Mi mortigontes lin.  = I (at an unspecified time) have not completed the action of killing him.

Even talking about untensed verbs in English (or Esperanto) is difficult, because tense is required on every verb.

Another language that can use untensed 'verbs' is Lojban, where they are called "brivla".  Unmarked brivla can be interpreted as being in any tense, and it's always possible to add a specific tense or aspect to any brivla.  An unmarked brivla doesn't mean "for all time"; rather, it means that no specific time is indicated at all.  

A
mike,
Stefo / Stephan