Past tense question
av 3rdblade, 27 januari 2011
Meddelanden: 19
Språk: English
sudanglo (Visa profilen) 28 januari 2011 10:56:38
I've never seen it formulated as a rule, but I guess that in Esperanto a sequence of pasts in a narrative is to be understood as referring absolutely to the same time unless there is indication to the contrary.
On the other hand, everybody knows the rule that in reported speech the time in the 'ke' clause is relative to the time of the reporting verb. Li diris ke li estas/estis Esperantisto - at the time of his speaking, or prior to.
However I have seen some examples where there is some doubt whether the verb is acting like a reporting verb or not.
Incidentally, I wonder why the Esperantists have not adopted 'estintis' (cf devintus, povintus) instead of the cumbersome 'estis estinta'.
orthohawk (Visa profilen) 28 januari 2011 13:51:19
sudanglo:True Daniel. The problems arise when the translator or speaker is insensitive to any misinterpetation, I've seen a few examples in published works. If I can find one that annoyed me I'll post.I thought the rule for reported speech was "use the same tense in the reported sentence as was originally used" i.e. as if it were a verbatim quote instead of a k::*-clause.
On the other hand, everybody knows the rule that in reported speech the time in the 'ke' clause is relative to the time of the reporting verb. Li diris ke li estas/estis Esperantisto - at the time of his speaking, or prior to.
"He said he was going home" what he actually said was "I'm going home" so, "li diris, ke li iras hejmen."
erinja (Visa profilen) 28 januari 2011 15:00:10
sudanglo:Incidentally, I wonder why the Esperantists have not adopted 'estintis' (cf devintus, povintus) instead of the cumbersome 'estis estinta'.I think the reason is that compound tenses are generally frowned upon. So if you are trying to avoid using compound tenses, period, there is not much incentive to come up with an easier/shorter way to form a compound tense.
In most cases, Esperanto is clearest when written using only simple tenses, plus additional words that give the appropriate context so you know the timing of an action. Complex tenses can make things unnecessarily complicated, so we avoid them except in cases where precise tense is considered absolutely necessary.
sudanglo (Visa profilen) 29 januari 2011 11:42:33
There may be no actual direct speech.
'I thought you were French' becomes 'Mi kredis ke vi estas franco', but there is no prior utterance of the thought.
'Mi kredis ke vi estis instruisto' would be I thought you were (used to be) a teacher.
But in 'Mi sciis almenaŭ tion, ke li ne amis sian edzinon', I think that we have switched back to absolute reference (ie both verbs refer to a past relative to now), and there may be some uncertainty about where in the past the 'amis' refers to.
horsto (Visa profilen) 29 januari 2011 17:39:41
sudanglo:If think the only uncertainty here is if the writer made an error or not:
But in 'Mi sciis almenaŭ tion, ke li ne amis sian edzinon', I think that we have switched back to absolute reference (ie both verbs refer to a past relative to now), and there may be some uncertainty about where in the past the 'amis' refers to.
Mi sciis almenaŭ tion, ke li ne amis sian edzinon
has a different meaning than
Mi sciis almenaŭ tion, ke li ne amas sian edzinon
In english and also in german you always have to use the past tense here, Esperanto uses a different system which you perhaps could call a "realtime system": The tense in the ke part rilates to the time in the past when this happened.
Here some examples from Zamenhof:
Matene li tra la fera kadro antaŭ sia malgranda fenestro povis vidi, kiel la popolo el la urbo alkuras por vidi kiel oni lin pendigos.
Subite li aŭdis, ke iu alrajdas de la vojo al la domo ...
sudanglo (Visa profilen) 29 januari 2011 21:12:11
I have a feeling that there's a difference in tense usage in ensuing subclause between, 'Li sciis ke' and 'Li sciis tion, ke' - or at any rate that there are cases where the subclause tense usage is absolute (relative to now, rather than then) when the main verb is in the past..
What about in 'Li certis pri tio, ke ...'?
Am I mistaken about this?
sudanglo (Visa profilen) 30 januari 2011 11:24:18
The important point is that sometimes the tense usage in the subclause is absolute, sometimes relative.
Interestingly Horst, PAG gives as an example of where you may find both uses a sentence with 'vidis kiel'
horsto (Visa profilen) 30 januari 2011 13:20:19
sudanglo:I had a quick read of PAG on this topic and it would seem that there are some grey areas.It's sometimes confusing, I would like to read more about the rules of this usages. PMEG seems to describe only the ke-subclauses.
The important point is that sometimes the tense usage in the subclause is absolute, sometimes relative.
Interestingly Horst, PAG gives as an example of where you may find both uses a sentence with 'vidis kiel'
I think it doesn't depend on the verb at all. In Esperanto you can change the tense in subclauses to show the sequence of events. That seems to be possbile even in new sentences:
from La virineto de la maro
La kvara fraŭlino ne estis tiel kuraĝa; ŝi restis en la mezo de la sovaĝa maro kaj rakontis, ke ĝuste tie estas la plej bele. Oni povas rigardi tre malproksime ĉirkaŭe, kaj la ĉielo staras kiel vitra kloŝo super la maro.
Okay, ŝi rakontis, therefore this seems to be an example of indirect speech.
Miland (Visa profilen) 30 januari 2011 18:18:00
horsto:La kvara fraŭlino..rakontis, ke ĝuste tie estas la plej bele..Quite so!
Okay, ŝi rakontis, therefore this seems to be an example of indirect speech.
I would say that reported speech following ke requires a verb that indicates that something is in a person's mind, which is then communicated to the reader or listener. Verbs like scii, kredi, diri, skribi, or rakonti are all suitable for this purpose. Here are two examples that I made up:
"He knew that the examination was going to be difficult." Li sciis ke la ekzameno estos malfacila.
"He wrote to her that there were demonstrations in the city." Li skribis al ŝi ke estas manifestacioj en la urbo.