vallath@ucbcad.UUCP (Vallath Nandakumar) (07/07/85)
I found, when learning Russian, that the most difficult aspect :-) of using Russian verbs correctly was when they were in the infinitive and imperative forms. Use of a finite Russian verb in the indicative mood is fairly straightforward, and is almost a direct correspondence from English or Malayalam tenses. (Malayalam, A Dravidian language from South India, is my mother tongue. I feel that the tense system of English, and more so of Malayalam, conveys verbal meaning much more efficiently than the aspect system of Russian, but this could very well be because my knowledge of Russian is quite limited.) Did other people find it also true that the imperative and infinitive were tough going for non-Slavic speakers? Somebody mentioned earlier that the Slavic languages developed an aspect system at some time he/she was able to state. What system of tenses was there before that? Judy (whose article was very interesting), mentioned that Bulgarian has a separate tense to describe what was directly observed and what was not. Sanskrit has such a mood, aspect or whatever you want to call it, and it had a full conjugation system for all three persons and numbers (singular, dual and plural). Those erudite scholars of Sanskrit pointed out that the verb can never be used in the first person, but one scholar, more erudite than the rest, made up a list of statements in which the tense could be used. For example: "I was so drunk that I went and punched the king on his nose". You can bet that the speaker did not know waht he was doing if he was in ancient India! Vallath Nandakumar Dept. of EECS, UC Berkeley. esvax.vallath@berkeley.arpa, ucbvax!ucbesvax!vallath
debe@mit-vax.UUCP (Stephen Humble) (07/16/85)
Astrological Sign: "No Parking" ***This is not self-referent.*** >Judy (whose article was very interesting), mentioned that >Bulgarian has a separate tense to describe what was directly >observed and what was not. Sanskrit has such a mood, aspect or >whatever you want to call it, and it had a full conjugation >system for all three persons and numbers (singular, dual and >plural). Those erudite scholars of Sanskrit pointed out that >the verb can never be used in the first person, but one >scholar, more erudite than the rest, made up a list of >statements in which the tense could be used. There is a similar mood in Turkish and at least some of the other Altaic languages. In Turkish, it's formed by suffixing -mis, to the verb stem. (The s has a cedilla.) It's used (among other times) when the speaker is reporting someone else's statement or making an inference. It is fairly common since using a definite form implies that the speaker actually saw, heard etc. the event described. It pops up when you want to say something like I guess I left my key in the house. Anahtarimi evde birakmis,im. as opposed to I left my key in the house. (on purpose, I remember doing it etc.) Anahtarimi evde biraktim.