The CBB

Hey, I'm having trouble coming up with a way of making a way of indicating past tense in my Conlang, so I'd appreciate seeing some of yours as some inspiration. Everyone and anyone please post. :D

Valoski wrote:Hey, I'm having trouble coming up with a way of making a way of indicating past tense in my Conlang, so I'd appreciate seeing some of yours as some inspiration. Everyone and anyone please post. :D

What do you have so far? Can you provide a little more info?

Valoski wrote:Hey, I'm having trouble coming up with a way of making a way of indicating past tense in my Conlang, so I'd appreciate seeing some of yours as some inspiration. Everyone and anyone please post. :D

I use particles preceding the verb.

Ko - past tense perfective.
Me - past tense imperfective.

My lang is generally head-first, and rather isolating.

Thakowsaizmu wrote:

Valoski wrote:Hey, I'm having trouble coming up with a way of making a way of indicating past tense in my Conlang, so I'd appreciate seeing some of yours as some inspiration. Everyone and anyone please post. :D

What do you have so far? Can you provide a little more info?

I have done nothing. All I can say is my Verbs can express basically everything with inflection so far, but please still post, as any ideas still help.

Valoski wrote:

Thakowsaizmu wrote:

Valoski wrote:Hey, I'm having trouble coming up with a way of making a way of indicating past tense in my Conlang, so I'd appreciate seeing some of yours as some inspiration. Everyone and anyone please post. :D

What do you have so far? Can you provide a little more info?

I have done nothing. All I can say is my Verbs can express basically everything with inflection so far, but please still post, as any ideas still help.

When planning a conlang, a good idea is trying to integrate ideas so they work together from the very outset; if you just go about conlanging by making a list of tenses, a list of cases, a list of moods, a list of aspects, etc, you won't get an organically interacting whole. So, really, does your conlang have any features this far, or traits, that we could know of? Do you have a vision for your conlang - is there anything in specific you would like for it to have or do? Once we know this, providing better advice regarding a tense system is much easier, and probably the advice will be much more helpful.

Systemzwang wrote:When planning a conlang, a good idea is trying to integrate ideas so they work together from the very outset; if you just go about conlanging by making a list of tenses, a list of cases, a list of moods, a list of aspects, etc, you won't get an organically interacting whole. So, really, does your conlang have any features this far, or traits, that we could know of? Do you have a vision for your conlang - is there anything in specific you would like for it to have or do? Once we know this, providing better advice regarding a tense system is much easier, and probably the advice will be much more helpful.

+1

Valoski wrote:
I have done nothing. All I can say is my Verbs can express basically everything with inflection so far, but please still post, as any ideas still help.

So, it's a rather synthetic language then? Perhaps polysynthetic? Is it primarily prefixing or suffixing, or both?

Do you have any ideas of the syntax? Head-first? Head-last? Non-configirational?

It would be natural for a highly synthetic language express tense by affixes. But it's by no means necessary - you don't even need to have tense as a category of inflection. (Isn't this the case in Greenlandic - that verbs aren't inflected for tense, despite the language being over-all heavily inflected?)


How many past tenses do you want to have? One? Two? More?

Mithara handles this in a rather boring way: Simple tense prefixes. Bill PST-stab his wife.

Essun has a tense/aspect clitic that inserts itself into the second position in the clause. His=PST wife Bill stab

An unnamed new project I've been tinkering with today has a more interesting system: A four-way distinction between Past, Present, Future, and Neutral. This is fused with a hierarchical person agreement clitic that attaches to the end of the verb phrase (the language being VOS). Effectively, "Neutral" tense means the clause is undefined for tense, meaning the tense distinction is (sort of) optional. Sort-of, because dependent clauses are required to take the neutral tense. Only matrix clauses can take one of the other three. Stab his wife=3.PST Bill

In Lapan, past tense is the default, and it is distinguished from non-past. Nothing really crazy.

In Kinál it's more complicated, there are several markers for past tense that are distinguished by how long ago the event happened. These can be anywhere from an hour ago to so far in the past that it can only be supposed (like from present time to dinosaurs). That extreme is usually reserved for fables and other things of the sort, but it can also be used by tribal elders or shamans to tell about their childhood or young adulthood.

to so far in the past that it can only be supposed (like from present time to dinosaurs). That extreme is usually reserved for fables and other things of the sort, but it can also be used by tribal elders or shamans to tell about their childhood or young adulthood.

Did you come with that on your own? I think I may steal that!

Anyway, in Anuvian, there are five past tenses. Three are shown by vowel ablaut, and the other two are shown by one of the other past ablauts + a separate marker. The pasts are (earlier) today, last night, yesterday, near past, and distant past.

thaen wrote:Did you come with that on your own? I think I may steal that!

Nope. Some natlangs have a legendary, ancestral, or mythic past tense. Its usage varies, but in Mithara it's used to refer to any event before the speaker's lifetime.

Micamo wrote:Nope. Some natlangs have a legendary, ancestral, or mythic past tense. Its usage varies, but in Mithara it's used to refer to any event before the speaker's lifetime.

It can also be a sort of combination evidential and degree-of-remoteness.
If not only every eywitness, but also everyone who ever met an eyewitness, died before the speaker was born, for instance, then the speaker couldn't even have third-hand knowledge of it. So, any knowledge the speaker does have of it, must be ancestral and/or legendary and/or mythic.

thaen wrote: Did you come with that on your own? I think I may steal that!

Actually I stole the idea from Inuktitut and just changed around the time frames.

Hi, Thaen,

Well, you could use tense markers to do double duty as aspect markers like so...

(clause.initial.aspect.marker) subject tense.marker-verb (object)

subject past-verb (object) e.g. "The dog ate my homework.
subject future-verb (object) e.g. "The dog will eat my homework."

(clause initial "present" marker marks imperfective/continuous aspect)

present subject past-verb (object) e.g. "The dog was eating my homework."
present subject present-verb (object) e.g. "The dog is eating my homework."
present subject future-verb (object) e.g. "The dog will be eating my homework."

(clause-initial "past" marker marks perfective aspect)

past subject past-verb (object) e.g. "The dog had eaten my homework."
past subject present-verb (object) e.g. "The dog has eaten my homework."
past subject future-verb (object) e.g. "The dog will have eaten my homework."

(clause-initial "future" marker marks incipient aspect)

future subject past-verb (object) e.g. "The dog was about to eat my homework."
future subject present-verb (object) e.g. "The dog is about to eat my homework."
future subject future-verb (object) e.g. "The dog will be about to eat my homework."

A clause with no aspect marker and a present tense marker on the verb might be in gnomic tense. (For those who came in late, this is the timeless tense of such timeless states of affairs as "two and two make four."

I came up with this independently, but don't plan on using it in any of my languages. I imagine that others have thought of similar schemes.

Hope this helps,

Jim G.

...just post how YOU, yes YOU do past tense in any of your Conlangs, and please provide the prefix/suffix/particle if you use one. That's ALL I want you to do! I appreciate your trying to help, but I really do just want ideas from actual Conlangs.

Møssogzøn does not mark tense morphologically, so tense is assumed from context. Adverbs can remove ambiguity, but they are generally unused.

So:

Zujøtsafuz uutun paztcham. - The man has a hat.
Zujøtsafuz uutun paztcham. - The man had a hat.
Zujøtsafuz uutun paztcham. - The man will have a hat.

3SM.ERG-DUR-have-3SM.ABS male-human head-protector

If we're trying to avoid ambiguity:

Zujøtsafuz uutun paztcham. - The man has a hat.
Zujøtsafuz máéxtenyæ uutun paztcham. - The man had a hat.
3SM.ERG-DUR-have-3SM.ABS previous-time-ADV male-human head-protector
Zujøtsafuz riivtenyæ uutun paztcham. - The man will have a hat.
3SM.ERG-DUR-have-3SM.ABS future-time-ADV male-human head-protector

As you can see, the sentences with adverbs are rather long (although this is partly to do with the romanisation), so they are generally left out.

míkl wrote: If we're trying to avoid ambiguity:

Zujøtsafuz uutun paztcham. - The man has a hat.

This doesn't remove any ambiguity, though!
Only the other examples you provided remove ambiguity, in this case, we're still back at possibly ambiguous, unless the speaker previously has informed the listener that "hey, I'm avoiding ambiguity, so if I don't specify what tense, assume present".

Systemzwang wrote:

míkl wrote: If we're trying to avoid ambiguity:

Zujøtsafuz uutun paztcham. - The man has a hat.

This doesn't remove any ambiguity, though!
Only the other examples you provided remove ambiguity, in this case, we're still back at possibly ambiguous, unless the speaker previously has informed the listener that "hey, I'm avoiding ambiguity, so if I don't specify what tense, assume present".

Quite true actually, get back to me on that one...

Hi, Valoski,

One of my actual conlangs, Palo, marks the non-past with verb-final word order and past with verb-initial word order.

--Jim G.

míkl wrote:

Systemzwang wrote:

míkl wrote: If we're trying to avoid ambiguity:

Zujøtsafuz uutun paztcham. - The man has a hat.

This doesn't remove any ambiguity, though!
Only the other examples you provided remove ambiguity, in this case, we're still back at possibly ambiguous, unless the speaker previously has informed the listener that "hey, I'm avoiding ambiguity, so if I don't specify what tense, assume present".

Quite true actually, get back to me on that one...

I have thought about this, and have come up with a solution.

Tense is marked using the adverbs when there is a change in tense, after this, the adverbs do not need to be used again until there is another change in tense. If no tense is mentioned at the beginning then the present tense is assumed.

Unfortunately, I have just realised that this still creates a problem because no-one will know when you've changed to present tense, so there will have to be an adverb here as well.

The reason for me trying not to use the adverb in the present tense as a sort of present imperative.

So now, the tense system works something like this:

Zujøtsafuz máéxtenyæ uutun paztcham. - The man had a hat
3SM.ERG-DUR-own-3S.ABS previous-time-ADV male-human head-protector
The tense then remains the same:
Zukotsafuz uutun paztcham. - The man's hat was stolen
3SM.ERG-CESS-own-3S.ABS male-human heat-protector
The tense then changes:
Zokotsafuz riivtenyæ ootun paztcham ezej uutunott. - The woman will give her hat to the man.
3SF.ERG-CESS-own-3SF.ABS future-time-ADV female-human head-protector 3SF-GEN male-human-BEN