Re: YSID
- From: Jon Schild <jjs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 09 May 2009 07:12:39 -0700
Mike Schilling wrote:
Paul Clarke wrote:
On 8 May, 11:51, netcat <net...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <KJApID.1...@xxxxxxxxxxx>, djhe...@xxxxxxxxxxx says...
As to tenses: Indo-European languages (all of them, AFAIK)
divide time into three boxes, past present and future.
Estonian, not being Indo-European, doesn't have a grammatical future
tense.
According to many linguists the Germanic languages, including English,
don't have a future tense either - see, for example, the Language Log
post at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=897.
I will be surprised if I find that argument convincing.
The argument isn't that English has no way of expressing future action; such would be ridiculous. However, there is no grammatical future tense. We express future either by using present and understanding from context that it actually means future ("I am going to the concert Friday") or we cobble it together out of a phrase implying assurance ("I will do it.") Such lack of a real grammatical future has not been an obstacle to the use or understanding of English. This leads me to believe that a statement such as "Their language has no means of expressing time flow" does not really mean the speakers can't comprehend time flow, which kills many otherwise interesting implications.
--
Wanted dead and/or alive: Shroedinger's cat.
.
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