Hello Brock and others,

HB> An aspect of verb and tense that interests me is the contrast
HB> between how nouns are noncommittal about the existence of things
HB> and verbs and their adverbial additions do the job of affirming
HB> existence and placing it in time.

The ability to conceive of things that do not exist, or that cannot
exist, is, so far as I am aware, unique to our species. The primal
discovery of unreality is rooted in the collective consciousness of
humanity. In the Quran we have a glimpse of it in the story of Tree of
Paradise.

"Then Satan whispered to them, to reveal to them that which
was hidden from them ... He said, 'Your Lord has only prohibited you
from this tree lest you become angels, or lest you become immortals.'
And he swore to them, 'Truly, I am for you a sincere adviser,' (7:19).

This appears in many traditions in many forms: a lie requires a
possibility of the unreal.

HB> Nouns imply that the thing they name exists but they do so
HB> vaguely. Nouns are marked for many things, but whether the entity
HB> is real or fictional, alive or dead, now or not-now, is not one of
HB> them.

If this were so then it would be a simple matter to distinguish
fiction from reality. A race that could do this would risk, as a
result, being arrested on the evolutionary path, like cockroaches.

HB> Verbs are all about time-consciousness-- not just past and
HB> present, but complete, incomplete, relevant, etc.

I am not certain that complete/incomplete have anything to do with
time. English verbs express both time and aspect. Arabic verbs behave
in much the same way. In the Slavic languages, verbs are said to
express only aspect.

What verbs do express beyond doubt is motion or change. This, too, is
tangled up with our own concepts of time, but while motion and change
can be demonstrated to exist, time cannot. Time is quite likely to be
a human abstraction: a thing itself made possible by language alone.

HB> Verbs assert existence strongly, even when it was in the past. _To
HB> be_, some have said, is the fundamental verb in any language.

Arabic has no auxiliary verb that is equivalent to the English verb
"to be". When it is necessary to assert the existence of a thing, the
verb "to exist" is used. This is the word that brings creation out of
nothingness.

HB> The reason this all interests me is that I think it plays a role
HB> in the human religious tendency to believe in an afterlife. Our
HB> desire for the dead to go on living is not contradicted by our
HB> syntax.

This is colored by perceptions of death. Some traditions regard death
as merely a kind of sleep, and in turn, sleep as a kind of death.

Les vieux ne meurent pas
ils s'en dorent un jour
ils dorent trop longtemps

- Jacques Brel


Omar

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