Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Various indicative verb forms

As Vulgare currently stands, verbs have been simplified to express aspect and not tense. The imperfect form expresses an event that is continuing, which may be in the present time, sometime in the past, or sometime in the future. In order to express different concepts, Vulgare would use the sentence context or various helper verbs and participles. In order to choose these forms, I believe it beneficial to see the evolution of verbs in Latin's offspring languages like Spanish and French, as well as Classical Greek's modern offspring. In this post, I'll go through the indicative tenses one by one.

Active Tenses:

Present Tense
The present tense expresses an action which is continuing and is thus imperfect. This is the most basic verb form. Now if someone wants to stress the fact that the action is present progressive, one can use the verb esse (to be) + the active participle.

I am hearing - audio or sum audiente

Past Imperfect
The past imperfect tense expresses an action progressing in the past but not necessarily completed. The sentence "I was loving" would be expressed in Latin as amabam and in greek as ephiloun. Now this could be expressed in Vulgare using the perfect form of esse + the active participle. It could also be expressed by incorporating the Greek prefix e- which expresses past events.

I was hearing - e-audio or fui audiente

Future
In romance languages, the future tense of Latin was dropped and a new construction developed using the infinitive + habere (to hold, have). Thus you have the French future verai from ver (to see) + ai (I have) = I hold to seeing, I will see. Also, modern languages often use the helping verb ire (to go) + the infinitive. Either forms would work, but if contracting, I would suggest using an apostrophe to better represent the origin of the construct.

I will hear - io/habeo audire or audir'eo where audir'eo = audire + habeo

I'm dropping the Latin active future participle for the following:
auditurus (L.) --> iente/habente audire or audir'ente

Present Perfect
This tense shows that a verb has been currently completed, and although the perfective form is sufficient to express this, one may also want a simpler way to express this concept that corresponds to the developments in modern Romance languages and modern Greek. Over time, the Latin perfect participle transitioned into a passive participle, but it still retained part of its original role when complexed with the verb habere (to have). In French, for instance, saying "J'ai vu la fille" literally meant "I hold the girl seen." I believe modern Greek also has this development using have - echo. This can be easily incorporated into Vulgare.

I have heard - audavi or habeo/echo audito

The perfect participle can be formed as the following structure:
habente/echente audito

Pluperfect
This can be formed in a couple of ways paralleling forms above:

I had heard - e-audavi or habui audito

Future Perfect
You may get the drift. There are more options than the one below:

I will have heard - haber'eo audito

Passive:

Present
We have a conjugation for passive verbs, but one can also use the passive participle.

I am heard - audior or sum audito

Past Imperfect

I was heard - e-audior or fui audito

Future

I will be heard - io/habeo esse audito or ess'eo audito

Perfect
For the perfect forms, we may need a perfect participle of the verb esse (to be), maybe something as simple as eta/o. Thus one comes upon the following.

I have been heard - habeo/echo eto audito

Since the Latin perfect participle transitioned into a present passive participle, as we have in Vulgare, the new perfect participle would be made similar to the formation above. 
auditus (L.) --> habente/echente eto audito

Pluperfect

I had been heard - habui eto audito

Future Perfect

I will have been heard - haber'eo eto audito


There may be a few kinks in the schema above. Nothing's final.

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