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Turkish language has a gossip tense

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Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#241

Post by jangliss »

egeozcan wrote: post #235
MichaelZuo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, but you don’t need to explain how if you’re unsure. If you can just write one example in Turkish, of each case, so three total, most readers can probably puzzle it out with enough time using translation tools.

Abstract Concept of Police (e.g., law enforcement in general): > Polis, toplumun güvenliğini sağlamakla görevlidir. > (Police are responsible for maintaining public safety.) Police Force as an Organizational Unit: > Bu şehirdeki polis teşkilatı faaliyetlerini arttırdı. > (The police force in this city has expanded its operations.) Specific Police Force Within a Specific City: > İstanbul polisi son zamanlarda çok akti…

> Bu şehirdeki polis teşkilatı faaliyetlerini arttırdı.

Interestingly the -ki suffix here was borrowed from Persian (another Indo-European language like English), and effectively highlights a unique instance - "the one which" - in a way that Turkish otherwise doesn't specifically do.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#242

Post by marcellus23 »

ilayn wrote: post #225
marcellus23 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct that it conveys some temporal information. You're incorrect that that makes it a tense. The imperative mood in English ("Go do this!") can be said to convey a future act. After all, you can't order someone to have done something in the past, or to be doing something right now. But that doesn't mean we refer to it as the "imperative tense". If you look up the definition of grammatical mood on Wikipedia,…

You are thinking in western grouping of tenses on a verb conjugation of a different language. It is not the mood that is not inferred here. It is the property of the verb. Verb itself can be used to communicate the same information with a single word "Gitmisim" just as valid ("I apparently went there"). So where is the tense of a single word if it does not have tense in it? How do turkish people communicate without a…

I'm not entirely following your argument. If your point is that it's a "single word", that doesn't really matter. That's just because Turkish is a synthetic language (uses morphology to convey info instead of separate words). Latin is famously a synthetic language and it still has concepts of mood, tense, and aspect.

Frankly, you don't have to take my word for it. I suggest doing some research on how mood and tense work in linguistics. It's not clear to me that you understand what these terms actually mean. Maybe I'm wrong.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#243

Post by ilayn »

marcellus23 wrote: post #242
ilayn wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are thinking in western grouping of tenses on a verb conjugation of a different language. It is not the mood that is not inferred here. It is the property of the verb. Verb itself can be used to communicate the same information with a single word "Gitmisim" just as valid ("I apparently went there"). So where is the tense of a single word if it does not have tense in it? How do turkish people communicate without a…

I'm not entirely following your argument. If your point is that it's a "single word", that doesn't really matter. That's just because Turkish is a synthetic language (uses morphology to convey info instead of separate words). Latin is famously a synthetic language and it still has concepts of mood, tense, and aspect. Frankly, you don't have to take my word for it. I suggest doing some research on how mood and tense w…

I think you are also giving yourself too much credit on the separability of tense and mood and if it does not fit into your mental model you are discarding all other options. You can do the same research yourself. Mood and tense are not always separable as you might think. Morphology is a red herring here. It clearly transmits the essential time information and also adds mood no-confirm structure on top. Hence if you don't consider that as a tense, then I have the same suspicion about your knowledge and obviously I might be also wrong.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#244

Post by mda »

marcellus23 wrote: post #222
mda wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It coveys "the" temporal information in the sentence and it is always past. E.g. A children's story only contains this nothing else.

Imperative also conveys "the" temporal information in the clause and it is always past.

I said "the" because you said "it conveys 'some' temporal information".

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#245

Post by mda »

idlewords wrote: post #8

This is not a tense but a grammatical mood, it's called the inferential mood. A bunch of languages have it to distinguish eyewitness accounts from reported speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood Verb tense has to do with an action's relationship to time, mood expresses the speaker's relationship and attitude to the action. English is pretty low on moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive), while oth…

I am not sure I agree. The suffix -miş (and 4 other similar forms because of vowel harmony) is first and foremost indicative of time (the past). Yes there is the mood aspect, but time aspect, IMO, is primary.

From the book "Turkish, a Comprehensive Grammar": The markers of past tense in Turkish are the verbal suffixes -DI and -mIş and the copular marker -(y)DI. "the past copula -(y)DI expresses past tense in absolute terms; that is, it locates a situation in a time prior to the moment of speech. -mIş, by contrast, is a marker of relative past tense."

Robert Underhills "Turkish Grammar" calls it Narrative past tense.

Geoffrey Lewis "Turkish Grammar" writes "the mis-past is exclusively a past tense" " miş-past. This base is formed by adding -miş to the stem: gelmiş, görmüş, almış, bulmuş. Two distinct functions are combined in it."

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#246

Post by bloppe »

brnt wrote: post #237
bloppe wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German and Polish share a common ancestor.

It is something that can be said for any two languages ;)

One could say all sorts of things, sure, but that's neither here nor there. German and Polish have an identifiable common ancestor. I'd be surprised to learn of any grammatical similarities between the two that aren't also found in other IE languages.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#247

Post by marcellus23 »

mda wrote: post #244
marcellus23 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imperative also conveys "the" temporal information in the clause and it is always past.

I said "the" because you said "it conveys 'some' temporal information".

"some" and "the" are not mutually exclusive. If I say there's some cake in the kitchen, that doesn't mean it's not the only cake in the kitchen.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#248

Post by marcellus23 »

ilayn wrote: post #243
marcellus23 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not entirely following your argument. If your point is that it's a "single word", that doesn't really matter. That's just because Turkish is a synthetic language (uses morphology to convey info instead of separate words). Latin is famously a synthetic language and it still has concepts of mood, tense, and aspect. Frankly, you don't have to take my word for it. I suggest doing some research on how mood and tense w…

I think you are also giving yourself too much credit on the separability of tense and mood and if it does not fit into your mental model you are discarding all other options. You can do the same research yourself. Mood and tense are not always separable as you might think. Morphology is a red herring here. It clearly transmits the essential time information and also adds mood no-confirm structure on top. Hence if you…

I am not suggesting that you cannot convey both mood and tense information with the same pattern. I agree with that, and I already made that point in my English imperative example. I also agree that moods can restrict which tenses you can express, sometimes restricting it to only one possible tense (as with Turkish inferential).

The point I am making, is that by the definition of mood, "inferential" simply has to be a mood. The point of using it is to suggest a particular relationship with reality ("I didn't see this, but I heard it second-hand"). That's modality, i.e. mood. It also happens to restrict the temporality of the verb to the past.

> It clearly transmits the essential time information and also adds mood no-confirm structure on top.

What you seem to be referring to here is the actual vocal pattern that you attach to a verb root to signify gossip. Of course, word endings can convey both tense and mood, just as they can convey both gender and number. But they are still separate concepts.

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#249

Post by egeozcan »

jangliss wrote: post #241
egeozcan wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abstract Concept of Police (e.g., law enforcement in general): > Polis, toplumun güvenliğini sağlamakla görevlidir. > (Police are responsible for maintaining public safety.) Police Force as an Organizational Unit: > Bu şehirdeki polis teşkilatı faaliyetlerini arttırdı. > (The police force in this city has expanded its operations.) Specific Police Force Within a Specific City: > İstanbul polisi son zamanlarda çok akti…

> Bu şehirdeki polis teşkilatı faaliyetlerini arttırdı. Interestingly the -ki suffix here was borrowed from Persian (another Indo-European language like English), and effectively highlights a unique instance - "the one which" - in a way that Turkish otherwise doesn't specifically do.

No, the Persian ki is the conjunction (Polis teşkilatı faaliyetlerini arttırdı ki, hırsızlık azalsın), not the possessive suffix (-ki).

Sources: Me being a native speaker and also: Turkish Grammar (Oxford 2nd ed. 2001), Geoffrey Lewis. Pages 69 and 211 (Just checked to be sure).

Re: Turkish language has a gossip tense

#250

Post by mda »

marcellus23 wrote: post #247
mda wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said "the" because you said "it conveys 'some' temporal information".

"some" and "the" are not mutually exclusive. If I say there's some cake in the kitchen, that doesn't mean it's not the only cake in the kitchen.

Ok i see that you are being deliberately obtuse. Because by saying some, you meant time aspect was not primary. Which is wrong.

Anyway, I have put a bit more information about this tense up in the discussion.

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