Suggestion: A language for linguists

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em3ry
rupestrian
rupestrian
Posts: 13
Joined: 30 Dec 2021 22:09

Re: Suggestion: A language for linguists

Post by em3ry »

language of logic
  • true
  • false
  • equal
  • if
  • therefore
  • because
language of graph theory
  • to (destination)
  • from (origin)
  • via (route/way)
  • at (node)
  • connection
language of math
  • number
  • add
  • subtract
  • multiply
  • divide
language of languages
  • object
  • action
  • rule
  • type
  • instance
  • quality
  • manner
  • part
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em3ry
rupestrian
rupestrian
Posts: 13
Joined: 30 Dec 2021 22:09

Re: Suggestion: A language for linguists

Post by em3ry »

Tense + ???? + aspect. What I want to know is what is "????"?

(3)I AM going to be going to fix
(6)I AM going to be fixing...
(9)I AM going to be having fixed

(2)I AM going to fix...
(5)I AM fixing...
(8)I AM having fixed...

(1)I AM having been going to fix...
(4)I AM having been fixing... (i.e. I have been fixing)
(7)I AM having been having fixed...

Image

The box represents the time period during which "fixing" is taking place. Time is moving in the direction of the arrows. The moment "I am", during which the speaker is speaking, is the present which is either 2, 5, or 8.

2 is an arbitrary moment before "fixing" has started.
5 is an arbitrary moment during which "fixing" is taking place.
8 is an arbitrary moment after the "fixing" has been completed.

(Changing "am" to "was" or "will-be" moves the entire thing into the past or future respectively.)

I started with the grammatical sentences and then regularized them to show the underlying pattern.
Last edited by em3ry on 19 Jan 2022 18:33, edited 2 times in total.
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qwed117
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4094
Joined: 20 Nov 2014 02:27

Re: Suggestion: A language for linguists

Post by qwed117 »

well for sentences (3)(6)(9) "going to be" is actually a periphrastic future tense marker. If I'm going to analyze sentence (3), I'd say the speaker's most natural grammatically equivalent sentence would be "I will fix", simply 1SG FUT fix(-NPST). "am going to" I think developed as a sort of movement-future, where it expresses that the speaker is physically moving towards location of the target action, but I think it's pretty much lost semantic meaning, and is now just supplanting the "will" future completely. In (3), we then just have "be going to fix", which is a pretty clear invocation of the be GER progressive tense. Now the "go to fix" part is more clearly the movement-future of before. The sentence is a bit messy though, because fix is transitive and takes an object. If I add say "the radio" as a transitive object, I notice though that "I'm going to be going to fix the radio", I don't think the second go takes any future role, it's all movement, like say "going to the mall". (Note that "going to" won't resolve to "gonna" out here, unlike the first "going to")

You can do something similar for the other sentence, so for (3)(6)(9), the highlighted red is actually just the future progressive tense-aspect. Side note, the phrase "having fixed" appears to be a sort of benefactive passive voice? Maybe someone else can comment, but it seems to be a way of embedding something like "the technician fixed the radio".

Sentences (2)(5)(8) are simply the be + GER, which is traditionally the English present progressive tense-aspect.\

Sentences (1)(4)(7) are pretty difficult to parse. In my dialect, at least, the perfect auxiliary can't come after the progressive auxiliary, so the only time I'd have something like "I am having" is if "have" has a lexical role, not a grammatical one, eg "I am having guests over. I am having a fête at my place at noon. I am having a baby." Or I suppose that benefactive passive of before ("I am having my daughter vaccinated that day")*. Accordingly, I'd just say "I have been going to fix", which is just present perfect progressive tense-aspect.

* I don't know there's a difference between the role of have in say "I am having my daughter vaccinated that day" and "I am having a tech come over and look at the computer". Any thoughts?
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