Temporality in Gurim
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Gurim's version of tenses
This public article was written by [Deactivated User] on 3 Dec 2014, 03:57.
[comments] grm Gurim does not have tense or aspect. Instead, a sentence or phrase is preceded by a temporal noun in the instrumental case. These temporal nouns are often generic -- bad (past), gile (present), or uca (future) -- but can also be more specific, such as iminla (night) or sern (day). The instrumental case is formed by suffixing -hak to the noun.
For example:
ucahak future.INSTR "with future" ~ "in the future"
iminlahak night.INSTR "with night" ~ "at night"
Combining these nouns is also possible:
ucaiminlahak future.night.INSTR "future night with" ~ "in the future during the night"
iminlasernhak night.day.INSTR "night day with" ~ "during both the night and the day"
Note that in "ucaiminlahak," the phrasing isn't specific about which night or how far into the future; it can just as easily mean tonight as next month (but still during the night). However, it does connote (though not say for certain) some other information that may not be as clear to nonnatives -- the ordering of "uca" before "iminla" normally implies a single instance, whereas the opposite ordering "iminlaucahak" would normally imply that something will be done habitually during the night. Of course, neither of these implications are set in stone.
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