Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ptsfa.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!decwrl!amd!dual!ptsfa!rob From: rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo) Newsgroups: net.ai,net.nlang Subject: Re: natural language deficiencies? Message-ID: <334@ptsfa.UUCP> Date: Thu, 25-Oct-84 16:22:31 EST Article-I.D.: ptsfa.334 Posted: Thu Oct 25 16:22:31 1984 Date-Received: Sun, 28-Oct-84 06:15:45 EST References: <12582@sri-arpa.UUCP> <12300003@uicsl.UUCP> <194@oliveb.UUCP> <619@gloria.UUCP> <801@aplvax.UUCP> Organization: Pacific Bell, San Francisco Lines: 27 > <> > It is well-known that the Hopi (American Indian) language only has a > present tense, there are no past or future tenses for their verbs. > Surely this is a language deficiency. Similarly Indonesian does not have tenses either (nor aspect or person or number). However, the meanings that tenses, etc. express in English et al. get expressed with separate words in Indonesian. In fact English doesn't even have a real future tense, e.g. no prefix/suffix added to verb root to denote future; English uses a separate word 'will' to denote futurity, as well as phrases like 'be going to'. Indonesian has a whole battery of adverbs to take the place of verb tense. The lack of a syntactic feature does not necessarily mean a communicative deficiency. And in any case it is not clear that if a language cannot communicate some certain meaning it is deficient - maybe the native speakers of that language have no need to express that meaning. Do Congolese Pigmies need to have a word for snow? Actually that's a slightly different issue than tense, because 'snow' is an object whereas tense is has a more abstract significance. use the separate auxiliary verb 'will' with the verb root. -- Rob Bernardo, Pacific Bell, San Francisco, California {ihnp4,ucbvax,cbosgd,decwrl,amd70,fortune,zehntel}!dual!ptsfa!pbauae!rob