Minhast: Difference between revisions

<br/> A few additional comments need to be made about the tense and aspect markers.  The Present Tense in combination with the Imperfect Aspect is commonly used as the "narrative tense" in both traditional oral literature, and modern literature involving poetry and fiction where the author wishes to convey a sense of intimacy and immediacy in a narrative.  The Present Imperfect is also used in ordinary speech to describe an action that began in the past but nevertheless is still continuing, illustrated in such sentences as ''Tenkūr wandirahyilabu >> *tenkūr morning wa=ind-rahy-l-ab-u'' (CONN=INCEP-cry-DISTR-3SF-IMPF-TRANS), lit. "This morning she begins crying [still]".  Minhast does have a Continuative affix ''-xt-'', but it occurs in the Teme I slot. A different meaning would result if intervening affixes from the Theme I slot surfaced.  For example, if the Theme I Iterative affix appeared after the Continuative affix, the resulting phrase ''Tenkūr waxtixrirahittarlabu >> *Tenkūr wa=xt-xr-rahy-tar-l-ab-u'' (CONN=INCEP-ITER-cry-DISTR-3SF-IMPF-TRANS) actually means "This morning she begins to continue to cry several times [still]."  The latter sentence implies the act of crying occurred in discrete individual events since the start of crying. up until the present.  The previous sentence, however, cannot be interpreted in that manner.  This example shows that Minhast speakers consider time frames as relative to each other, as opposed to typical Indo-European languages that consider time as having discrete start and end point.

=== Post-TA Affixes ===