Then there's that weird thing with modern Hebrew at least (I haven't yet looked at enough ancient Hebrew to know) where verb tense differences between the dominant and subordinate clauses in a sentence change the meaning subtly. If the past tense is used in a subordinate clause where the past tense also appears in the dominant clause, it indicates that the subordinate-clause action is happening *further* in the past than the action in the dominant clause. :)
Apparently nobody much uses the complex binyanim in Modern Hebrew, as is the case, I'm told, with things like the masculine numbers and that sort of thing...
Japanese does all of its complex tenses by compounding verbs together, so they're sort of concatenated, as I recall, and/or by adding idiomatic expressions ("might be," "appears to be" etc.) into the verb.
If the past tense is used in a subordinate clause where the past tense also appears in the dominant clause, it indicates that the subordinate-clause action is happening *further* in the past than the action in the dominant clause. :)
Whoa... that does seem like a useful construct to have at times, but I'll bet it causes a lot of confusion for people learning the language. It would sure hose me. :-)
Apparently nobody much uses the complex binyanim in Modern Hebrew, as is the case, I'm told, with things like the masculine numbers and that sort of thing...
I'm curious about your source. I went to bilingual (English/Hebrew, including native-language teachers and some classmates) schools from pre-school though High School and was at various ages able to fool people into thinking I was a native Israeli, and none of this matches my experience.
"the complex binyanim"? Which are those? There are are roots which have standard meanings in only some of the 7 binyanim, or mean different things in different binyanim, so if you don't use certain binyanim you will lose parts of your basic vocabulary as well. To illustrate with two very common, very basic verbs: ktb 'write' is usually used in the qal binyan while dbr 'speak' is usually used in the pi'el binyan. If someone were to stop using either of these binyanim, they would lose some very common, very basic vocabulary. Some binyanim are used more than others, but all have some basic everyday words.
As for not using masculine numbers, they don't get used much for counting (as in counting on fingers) but if you use a feminine number with a masculine noun it really does sound wrong/non-native.
Japanese does all of its complex tenses by compounding verbs together There's a good-sized appendix in the back of my Japanese intermediate grammar book full of auxiliary verbs that you can append to another verb to modify its action, and you can more or less tack on as many as you want. (The number of combinations of the four giving verbs alone is kind of daunting.) There's also a whole big group of nouns and pseudonouns that get attached to the ends of verbs in order to show markings that you might have been missing just from the aux-verbs.
That said, I've been sitting here trying to think how to express future perfect in Japanese using only verbs and not coming up with a way I'm sure will work--most things I think of just use simple imperfective with adjectival time-markers. :)
My pitiful Hebrew-related contribution
Apparently nobody much uses the complex binyanim in Modern Hebrew, as is the case, I'm told, with things like the masculine numbers and that sort of thing...
Japanese does all of its complex tenses by compounding verbs together, so they're sort of concatenated, as I recall, and/or by adding idiomatic expressions ("might be," "appears to be" etc.) into the verb.
Re: My pitiful Hebrew-related contribution
Whoa... that does seem like a useful construct to have at times, but I'll bet it causes a lot of confusion for people learning the language. It would sure hose me. :-)
Re: My pitiful Hebrew-related contribution
I'm curious about your source. I went to bilingual (English/Hebrew, including native-language teachers and some classmates) schools from pre-school though High School and was at various ages able to fool people into thinking I was a native Israeli, and none of this matches my experience.
"the complex binyanim"? Which are those? There are are roots which have standard meanings in only some of the 7 binyanim, or mean different things in different binyanim, so if you don't use certain binyanim you will lose parts of your basic vocabulary as well. To illustrate with two very common, very basic verbs: ktb 'write' is usually used in the qal binyan while dbr 'speak' is usually used in the pi'el binyan. If someone were to stop using either of these binyanim, they would lose some very common, very basic vocabulary. Some binyanim are used more than others, but all have some basic everyday words.
As for not using masculine numbers, they don't get used much for counting (as in counting on fingers) but if you use a feminine number with a masculine noun it really does sound wrong/non-native.
Re: My pitiful Japanese-related contribution
There's a good-sized appendix in the back of my Japanese intermediate grammar book full of auxiliary verbs that you can append to another verb to modify its action, and you can more or less tack on as many as you want. (The number of combinations of the four giving verbs alone is kind of daunting.) There's also a whole big group of nouns and pseudonouns that get attached to the ends of verbs in order to show markings that you might have been missing just from the aux-verbs.
That said, I've been sitting here trying to think how to express future perfect in Japanese using only verbs and not coming up with a way I'm sure will work--most things I think of just use simple imperfective with adjectival time-markers. :)
Re: My pitiful Japanese-related contribution
Erk. I meant "adverbial".