Tense games, English/Other langs: 1) future perf. past cond.?; most complicated tense, asp., ever?

Factual Questions
1

See subjects. I have forgotten what aspect and mood are, and yes I know I could look them up. So my query will undoubtedly not be correctly said. I’ll just use “tense.” I will be thrilled if my word usage and suggestions are analyzed with the correct terms.

For the first, at one point in a conversation yesterday I painted myself in a corner where the sentence demanded–and failed to receive–a weird-ass usage of “to be” (is that called, grammatically, something “existential?”) and “to need.”

Situation:
"At some future point, I will think “I should have realized that I should have done something in the past, a past reaching not to now but to some later time between now and that future point.”

Which leads me to subject 2):

Can anyone give examples of verb forms (?again, not sure what I should say here)/or languages that are particularly “rich” or “poor” compared to English? Every one, to me, is amazing, encapsulating in shorthand complicated stances toward time.*
*I occasionally compliment myself publicly for a nicely turned, rhythmically balanced sentence that comes out directly without any editing. This is one of those occasions.

2

Aspect is something that English verbs don’t have. Slavic languages have verbs with aspect, as do a bunch of other languages (ancient Greek, I think, and Arabic). It means that every* ‘verb’ consists of a verbal pair - one perfective and one imperfective. These are two infinitives with the exact same meaning, referring to the same actions, but emphasizing either the duration or the completion of those actions. Take for instance to write - I’ll give the Czech examples but most Slavic languages are pretty similar. To write is either psat (imperfective) or napsat (perfective).

In their conjugated form, the imperfective indicates ongoing writing (ja pišu - I am writing) whereas the perfective indicates a future writing (ja napišu - I will write). There is an additional auxiliary form ja budu psát which relies on the auxiliary ‘budu’ - I will. This can only be formed on the basis of imperfective verbs**. ‘*Ja budu napsát’ does not exist.

In the case of psat/napsat, the aspect pair is formed by adding a prefix, but unfortunately aspect pairs are formed in a lot of different and unpredictable ways: adding suffixes, changing suffixes, or just picking completely different verbs - eg klast, položit is an aspect pair meaning ‘to put down’. Unfortunately, adding prefixes is also used to change meaning - which aspect does not do - so for instance, to describe is popsat. From that perfective verb, the Czech language then constructs a secondary imperfective popsavat. Russian works similarly.

In the past tense, you get both as well - ja jsem psal (jsem is the first person sg of the auxiliary ‘to be’ - byt) and ja jsem napsal. Ja jsem psal means I was (in the process of) writing; ja jsem napsal means ‘I wrote’ (and completed writing).

There’s also numerous other forms, including past and present participles, gerunds, and auxiliary usage (eg I want to write - what aspect to use?). And there’s the imperative - which actually brings us to mood.

The English language does have mood, which can be indicate ‘I write’, imperative ‘write’, or for instance subjunctive or other irrealis moods. Mood has not so much to do with time, and more with reality. Obviously, then, mood and aspect can intersect, so for instance when you use the imperative in Czech you have to ask yourself whether to use the perfective or the imperfective form. Again, it’s my impression that the difference between eg piš! and napiš! would be something like ‘be in the process of writing’ and ‘write and complete writing’.

I must admit that although I’ve devoted long years to studying Slavic languages, aspect still has many many mysteries for me - but this is kind of what it is about.

*not every, there’s exceptions.
**not too sure about the differences between ‘ja budu psat’ and ‘ja napisu’

3

As an additional comment on aspect, I can give this example, from Russian, involving the verb “to wait”. Again, there are two forms: Imperfective, “zhdat’” and Perfective, “podozhdat’”.

If I use the imperative towards someone, depending on which verb I use, I mean the following:

“Zhditje, pozhalujsta” – “Wait, please” (and I have no idea how long you’ll have to wait. Might be 5 minutes, might be 6 hours).

“Podozhdite, pozhalujsta” – “Wait, please” (and this will be momentary, and your waiting will be over definitely soon).

Let us not get into the insanity that are movement verbs in Russian – Russian doesn’t just have “to go” – You have different verbs that apply according to how you go: You go on foot (“idti”), you go overland by means of a vehicle (“jekhat’”), you fly to your destination (“letat’”), you run on foot to your destination (“begat’”)… And so on.

Also, each movement verb can be what is called “uni-directional” or “multi-directional”. This means that you are specifying movement in a definite direction towards a definite goal, or movement just “in general”, aimlessly going around.

Also also, each of those can be imperfective or perfective, of course.

So, such a simple sentence as “the children run in the park”, depending on the verb employed, may mean:

-“The children run in the park” (they are holding a race around a circuit, and no idea when it will end).
-“The children run in the park” (they will be holding a race around a circuit, which will have a definite start and end time).
-“The children run in the park” (they are running all over the place, chaotically, and no idea when it will end).
-“The children run in the park” (they will be running all over the place, chaotically, but they will begin doing that and will end at a definite time. Maybe this is recess?).

So… Yeah, aspect can be problematic.

If it works like Russian, the likely difference would be this:

“ja budu psat” = “I will be writing, but the process doesn’t have a definite beginning or end. I will be writing something in the future, at a not-yet-defined moment — either that, or I will be writing continuously for a very long time and without a clearly defined endpoint”.

“ja napisu” = “I will be writing in the future, beginning at a definite (and possibly already pre-planned) point of time, and ending at a definite (and also possibly already pre-planned) point of time.”

So, if I want to say “I will be writing a novel”, saying that it is one of the projects in my bucket list, I would possibly be using “ja budu psat”.

If I wanted to say “I will be writing my Christmas cards tomorrow”, saying that I have that particular chore to carry out and implying that I will be doing that for a definite period of time tomorrow, I would possibly use “ja napisu”.

4

Incorrect.

5

Well, it can be said that English does not express aspect the way Slavic languages do: English depends on auxiliaries, instead of having separate verbs for the imperfective and perfective aspects.

6

That is not the same as English verbs not having aspect. Anyway, the base verbs themselves do have aspect: past/non-past. Further conjugation of aspect does, as you say, require auxiliary verbs.

7

I would say that past vs. non-past is a distinction of tense rather than aspect. According to the Wikipedia article linked to earlier (post #4):

Like tense, aspect is a way that verbs represent time. However, rather than locating an event or state in time, the way tense does, aspect describes “the internal temporal constituency of a situation”, or in other words, aspect is a way “of conceiving the flow of the process itself”.[7] English aspectual distinctions in the past tense include “I went, I used to go, I was going, I had gone”; in the present tense “I lose, I am losing, I have lost, I have been losing, I am going to lose”; and with the future modal “I will see, I will be seeing, I will have seen, I am going to see”. What distinguishes these aspects within each tense is not (necessarily) when the event occurs, but how the time in which it occurs is viewed: as complete, ongoing, consequential, planned, etc.

“I go” vs. “I went” indicate where in time the action of going is taking place (tense), but do not give much information about the intrinsic temporal characteristics of the action itself (aspect). For that you definitely use auxiliaries in English.

8

Missed edit window :stuck_out_tongue: I wanted to say that “went” may express some aspectual information (“the action is done and complete”), but the present form can be aspectually imprecise (“I am home now” vs. “I am always in his bar”), with aspect for the action being specified by other words in the sentence.

9

I agree. But the notion that English verbs don’t have aspect is incorrect. It doesn’t matter that it takes more than one word to convey that, it still exists.

10

The Esperanto grammar appears to be rather funky: