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From: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428)
Subject: Re: Mongolian, native languages (was Languages: Hard, Harder, Hardest)
Message-ID: <Dw5026.G8z@tigadmin.ml.com>
Sender: usenet@tigadmin.ml.com (News Account)
Reply-To: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com
Organization: Merrill Lynch Europe
References: <rte-0808961437340001@135.25.40.118>
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 16:49:18 GMT
Lines: 58

In article <rte-0808961437340001@135.25.40.118>, rte@elmo.lz.att.com (Ralph T. Edwards) writes:
-->In article <4ube0n$3j2@news3.digex.net>, kcivey@cpcug.org (Keith C. Ivey) wrote:
-->
-->> susannah@gladstone.uoregon.edu wrote:
-->> 
-->> > Interesting, because my first language is English and I am always
-->> >grateful I don't have to learn it as an adult -- because it seems
-->> >extraordinarily difficult!  All those verb tenses.
-->> 
-->> What makes English verb tenses so difficult?  Most of the other
-->> languages I've been exposed to have verb systems that seem much
-->> more difficult than the English system.  Am I missing something?
-->> 
-->
-->Try explaining to a nonnative speaker of English when to use "have" versus
-->"am having."  How many get it down pat?  Next, when to use "must have been
-->going."
-->The auxiliary system is quite complex.

And why do I say "I have been to Paris three times" but "I went to Paris
three times last year"?

The English verb can be said to have 16 tenses:
    { present future past conditional } + { timeless continuous } +
    { imperfective perfective}
(These names are my own and not too good!)  The most complex of these tenses in
form is probably the perfective continuous conditional:
    I would have been going.

The full scheme is:
                    imperfective                        perfective
              timeless     continuous         timeless            continuous
present       I go         I am going         I have gone         I have been going
future        I will go    I will be going    I will have gone    I will have been going
past          I went       I was going        I had gone          I had been going
conditional   I would go   I would be going   I would have gone   I would have been going

(Of course this is arbitrary to a large extent.  Why do I call "I would go" the
conditional tense but say that "I must go" is the present of "must" plus the
infinitive of "go"?  And can't I factor out the relationship "past is to present
as conditional is to future"?  At the other extreme there are those who say that
English has only two tenses, present and past -- but they're just disagreeing
about the definition of the word "tense", not about the English language.
I find this analysis is te easiest to explain to non-native speakers who
have studied ENglish or their own language using a traditional grammatical
framework.)

Anyway, 16 tenses is quite a lot and the choice between the tenses is often
subtle.  (Even native speakers of English don't always agree on when to use the
imperfective timeless past as opposed to the perfective timeless present).

Native speakers of English who think that it is easy seem to understand as
much as proponents of IALs such as Glosa who claim their language has no
grammar.

-- jP --


