Re: where do so many tenses come from?

In article <AY6Wf.18336$dy4.17855@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "John
Atkinson" <johnacko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In English, there is a tendency, often a
requirement, to use the continuous "is ...ing" in many cases where Dutch
uses the simple verb. This has nothing to do with whether the event is
located in the present or the future.

A couple notes here that some either don't know or are forgetting about
differences between Germanic and Romance(to say nothing of Slavic)
languages: use of time-limiting tenses is Indo-European, to begin
with(not all languages have them; check Hopi), and which ones they have
varies. Germanic languages did not have progressive tenses. Latin did,
and its "children", the Romance languages, had them in early stages at
least. German and Dutch(the latter having been noted in the posts I've
read today) did not, but English invented its own progressive tenses,
which have proliferated. It has, on the other hand, lost the subjunctive
almost completely.

Language is such fun 8-)

--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar),
philologist, biblioholic medievalist

http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo


.