The simple past and perfect tenses
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Explaining the rather philosophical Spevten approach to talking about the past
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 20 Jul 2015, 23:07.
[comments] past,perfect,s-nouns,t-nouns,products,states,agents,habitual,progressive,tense,spe
1. Other suffixes
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Spevten verbs do not conjugate according to tense. So how do we describe things that happened in the past? The answer is a little philosophical, but in practice it's quite easy.Wherever possible, the Spevt try to talk about the past in terms of results, not actions. The most important thing is not what you intended or tried to do, but what impact you had. One way to do this is to refer to the products of our actions using nouns that end in s. So for example,
It lo cheysensus lovlenkreyl
I leave a letter [on] the day that we leave
I wrote a letter yesterday
It lo dwos
I leave doubts
I doubted [it]
The verbs le and lo (go/come and leave) are used to discuss time in terms of one's own movement through life. So the speaker kept moving through time, and left behind them a letter, implying that they wrote that letter. Likewise, the speaker left behind doubts.
It lo hwet lovlenkreys
I leave behind a happy person [in] the time that we leave
I was happy then
Spevten has a lot of words for types of agents -- almost all nouns that end in t belong to this category, and almost every root derives a t-noun. Many of these words are professions, but others describe transitory states that one does not occupy permanently and that are not strictly agents in the sense that they are not necessarily actively doing anything beyond embodying a state. When describing one's own state in the past, one metaphorically leaves the person who one was back then in the past and moves forward to experience other modes of being.
The stative simple past can also be used in place of the past habitual:
It lo cheysensut
I leave behind a letter writer
I used to write letters
Earlier, we said that the speaker leaves doubts behind, implying that they doubted the thing in question before but that now they have changed their mind. But what if they still have doubts now? One option would be to simply say "It dwo" (I doubt it) but sometimes one may want to indicate that one's doubts were triggered by an event in the past. This is actually very simple.
It lo e dwos
I leave with doubt
I doubted [it] (since then)
Using the preposition e, the speaker indicates that the doubts produced at that time stayed with them as they kept moving forwards.
Likewise, what if one wanted to say that one has been happy for some time?
Hwet lo
A happy person leaves
I have been happy
The same could be used for doubt, simply by taking on the doubt as an enduring state:
Dwet lo
An insecure person leaves
I have doubted [it] (ever since...)
Habitual actions are also expressed as states:
Cheysensut lo
A letter writer leaves
I have been writing letters
You might have noticed that there is some fluidity implied here between professional titles and transitory states. This is no accident. The Spevten labour system is based upon what's known as "consensual disciplines", whereby one's professional designation is re-affirmed through daily practice. Sokwit the Baker may stop baking at any time and become a meditator or a teacher or a homemaker: in fact, their daily life likely already involves constantly moving between these kind of states. The Spevten language doesn't inherently distinguish between someone who spends one hour baking one loaf of bread and someone who spends twenty years baking thousands of loaves. Likewise, there is no distinction between someone who spends one hour complaining and someone who spends twenty years complaining habitually, centreing the idea that all habits can be broken.
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