I have been studying for a few months and I have noticed that tenses and moods are completely absent from the language. I have also noticed - from the very few information that I have have – that also other non-indoeuropean languages do not conjugate verbs.
To what extent finite verbs are peculiar to indo-european languages?
2007-08-26 11:45:07 · 2 answers · asked by Andrea B 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
edited:
I have been studying "Chinese" for a few months and I have noticed that tenses and moods are completely absent from the language. I have also noticed – from the very few information that I have have – that also other non-indoeuropean languages do not conjugate verbs.
To what extent finite verbs are peculiar to indo-european languages?
2007-08-26 11:46:53 · update #1
No not at all. Chinese is the most extreme example of, and I may be remembering the name wrong, an isolating language, meaning that each morpheme is a separate word. Synthetic languages encode several pieces of information in a particular morpheme (for example "she" means feminine, singular, third-person, subject). Agglutinating languages add morphemes to the main word, each with a meaning. Polysynthetic languages somehow combine features of synthetic and agglutinating languages I think, adding several morphemes that each encompass several meanings to each main word. Most (all?) Indo-European languages are mostly synthetic (English is more isolating than a lot of them, but does have synthetic elements, like "she"). I believe African languages tend to be agglutinating and American (Amerindian) languages are polysynthetic.
2007-08-26 11:57:14 · answer #1 · answered by Goddess of Grammar 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
You might expect Japanese to be similar to Chinese, but in fact verbs in Japanese are also conjugated to express tense and modality, so tense and aspect are not confined to Indo-European languages
2007-08-27 05:37:55 · answer #2 · answered by dlm 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋