Nothing but past present

[Johnyxxx]

Hello,

I have got a question that is a little bit bizzare and very unconventional, I think. As we know, languages develop and evolve as the days go by and I want to ask native speakers (chiefly teachers and academics will have something to say, I guess) if they can imagine one day there will be an English language that will do only with one past tense, past perfect (as it is usual in many foreign languages).

Thanks a lot (and sorry if my question sounds strange; but it really interests me )

 

[MikeNewYork]

I doubt that English will ever get there. Your title should have been "past perfect"

 

[Johnyxxx]

I doubt that English will ever get there. Your title should have been "past perfect"

You are right, my fault. :-?

 

[Johnyxxx]

Most European languages that I know of have at least three tenses for talking about past situations: an imperfect, a perfect and a pluperfect.

My native language has only one past tense (like Slovak or Polish, for example).

 

[Eckaslike]

Welsh apparently has six past tenses, although some grammar experts here may not consider some of them to be true tenses. However, I don't know enough to re-classify them beyond their titles.

1. Preterite (form 1)
2. Preterite (form 2)
3. Perfect
4. Imperfect continuous
5. Imperfect habitual
6. Durative

 

[Johnyxxx]

Welsh apparently has six past tenses, although some grammar experts here may not consider some of them to be true tenses. However, I don't know enough to re-classify them beyond their titles.

1. Preterite (form 1)
2. Preterite (form 2)
3. Perfect
4. Imperfect continuous
5. Imperfect habitual
6. Durative

Six past tenses? Oh my gosh ... ! :shock:

 

[tkacka15]

My native language has only one past tense (like Slovak or Polish, for example).

The Polish language has two past tenses, the perfect and imperfect ones.

 

[Raymott]

In any case, if English were to drop a past tense, it would drop the past perfect. That is the tense that learners have trouble with. The simple past can be used with adverbs in most cases for the past perfect.
And language doesn't generally change to make the grammar more consistent with other languages.

 

[Skrej]

And language doesn't generally change to make the grammar more consistent with other languages.

Indeed, language doesn't generally change even to make the grammar more consistent with itself.

 

[tkacka15]

Indeed, language doesn't generally change even to make the grammar more consistent with itself.

What makes all grammars consistent are nouns and describing them adjectives and verbs modified by adverbs. That's the grammatical common denominator for all languages.

 

[Skrej]

What makes all grammars consistent are nouns and describing them adjectives and verbs modified by adverbs. That's the grammatical common denominator for all languages.

Not really - off the top of my head, I can cite Navajo. It doesn't have actual separate adjectives, so adjectives are inflected in the verb which then provides the adjective functionality. Also, the adverb is accomplished via clitics.

Navajo has relatively few nouns, as many of what we'd consider nouns in English are again accomplished via the verb. The nouns that do exist require specific verb forms, so you have to use different verb forms depending upon what the object is. There are 11 different verb stems that correspond to different general classifications of the noun (round and hard, slender and flexible, non-compact, mushy, etc.)

Some linguists even classify all these things as 'particles' in Navajo, leaving Navajo with just nouns, verbs, and particles.

The verb in Navajo is everything, comprising pretty much the entire sentence. It has separate verb tenses that differentiate between customary actions, and representative customary actions, as well as a separate tense to express wishful thinking or desires. The considerations of how the verb relates to the flow of time (time itself in Navajo isn't viewed as linear) creates 12 aspect categories and 10 sub-aspect categories, all of which require separate stems (although some aspects and modes share stems).

There is even an entire book dealing solely with Navajo verbs.

So no, I do not agree that there is consistency in grammars, or even common denominators. Some, especially those derived from the same language families may share traits, but start comparing say Athabaskan families with Indo-European language families, and you'll quickly lose the similarities.

Navajo was just one example of vastly different grammar that I was already passingly familiar with, but I'm sure with a bit of research into language isolates, you could lots of different approaches to grammar between languages.

 

[tkacka15]

To cut a long story short, what I've meant is that regardless of the differences in language grammars we all see things, people, have similar feelings and initiate, take part in, and go into actions that we have to name, hence the nouns and verbs which are so common in all languages.

 

[Skrej]

Thus, the whole theory of linguistic relativity, aka the Sapir-Whorf theory - that your language either influences or determines (depending upon how strongly you buy into the theory) your perception of the world, your thoughts, and your behavior.

I can't recall the exact details, but I remember reading about a study done where native speakers of different languages were given a group of objects that varied in size, shape, weight, texture, color, and other properties. They were then asked to group the objects. There were duplicates of all the properties, just not in the same category - i.e a large red wooden ball, a small blue cloth, a large yellow sheet, a small red metal box, etc.

What was interesting was that speakers of one language tended to group by color, where another language tended to group by size, and others by shape. Some language (possibly Swahili, or maybe some other African language) even grouped them by material or relative hardness or softness, if I recall correctly.

 

[tkacka15]

We use adverb for a word that can modify a clause, sentence, verb, adjective or adverb, but not a noun.

What about this: quite a girl, five days ago? Isn't it that adverbs quite and ago modify nouns a girl and days respectively?

 

[tkacka15]

Huddleston and Pullum save the day with ago. On page 632 of their Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2001), they classify ago as a preposition.

"Ago is also sometimes called a postposition, because it's obligatory for it to follow the noun phrase. We have to say three weeks ago, not ago three weeks. But ago is usually classified as an adverb, not a preposition. One can see the gradient from preposition to adverb when considering such examples as five years before, three years later, and far away." [Prof. David Crystal in his DCblog.]

 

[MikeNewYork]

I don't buy "ago" as preposition. It is an adverb.

 

[tkacka15]

See this.