Re: [tied] Periphrastic tenses

On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 12:36:43 +0000, tgpedersen
<tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

>> There is no ambiguity. If I understand you correctly,
>> you're saying that the old constructions used to be:
>
>Might have been. Since Trask says "didn't exist" (an ancient
>progressive tense in Baque, that is), I'm going for "might have
>existed".
>
>> etorri da "he has come" [he is come]
>> *etorr-ko da "he will come" [he is of coming] (now:
>> etorr-i-ko da)
>> etorr-en da "he is coming, he comes" [he is in coming]

I forgot to add an asterisk to *<etorren da>, which is
justified for the gloss as present progressive. <Etorren
da> itself exists, but it actually means "he will come".
The participle in the genitive -en, here indistinguishable
from the locative -n, is equivalent to the form of the
participle with "local genitive" -ko, and expresses future
tense ("he is of coming").

>So, in all, I think I've succeeded in showing that it is not
>impossible, as Trask states, that Basque might have had an old
>periphrastic progressive. One should also notice that Basque in some
>few verbs still has _inflected_ progressive tenses;

That's because the periphrastic form is no longer truly a
progressive:

I go = joaten naiz
I went = joan nintzen
I'm going = noa
I was going = nindoan

The specialization of the synthetic forms as progressives
(in the few verbs that still have them) is surprising. One
would have expected the opposite to have happened.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...