Talk:Latin tenses (semantics)

Rating

The rating of this article was Start class but recently changed by FloridaMan21 to grade B. In my view, it does not merit a B. The author's division of Latin tenses into "Primary", "Secondary Future", "Secondary Present", "Secondary Past" and "Tertiary", which the article adopts, appears to be entirely his own invention and not found in any authority on Latin. No reference is given for this division. The tenses agam 'I will do' or 'I will be doing' and ago 'I am doing' are both classified as both "Primary" and as "Secondary Present" for some reason; this is certainly not based on the terminology of any standard textbook. All the Latin examples and translations are copied wholesale from the article Latin tenses. Kanjuzi (talk) 17:05, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

I have reviewed the article once more and determined it is in the Start-C class range. I see @Kanjuzi that you are very involved in language-related articles so I highly respect your opinion. Thank you for your observation. FloridaMan21 (talk) 20:52, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

@FloridaMan21, Kanjuzi and I have previously discussed about these three topics, so he knows that what he is saying is not true. For a detailed response to each criticism, see the sections below.

However, given the timing of the grade lowering, I assume Kanjuzi did this as a reaction to the fact that the formal article on Latin tenses was graded C by a reviewer and that he thinks that the formal article is better than this one. Instead of improving the other article based on the reviewer's suggestions, which is something he and I could do cooperatively, he came here and lowered the grade.

The timing also implies that he did not like my suggestions on the talk page of what to do in reaction to the harsh review. Moreover, I know for a fact that he did not like my attempt to include the formal theory into Latin tenses, as suggested by the reviewer, because he reverted them and asked me not to mess with 'his article'.

I do not know how to react to this. Is there a way in Wikipedia to stimulate cooperation and lower tension and competition? I would be available to cooperate with Kanjuzi in improving the theoretical part of his article, if he is willing. I can leave that article alone, if he prefers. But I would like him to stop making false claims about me and this article to lower its grading. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 08:34, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Kanjuzi's criticism 1: double classification of 'am doing'

@Kanjuzi made the following criticism: The tenses agam 'I will do' or 'I will be doing' and ago 'I am doing' are both classified as both "Primary" and as "Secondary Present" for some reason; this is certainly not based on the terminology of any standard textbook.

@FloridaMan21, there is no claim in this article that the paradigm ["am doing", "is doing", "are doing"] is called both 'present' and 'present-in-present'. The claim is that these wordings can be 'used' either with a 'present meaning' or witth a 'present-in-present meaning'. The reason for the terminological confusion lies in the fact that Kanjuzi is only familiar with the formal theory of tense whereby Latin verbs and periphrases are called 'present', 'furture', 'imperfect', 'perfect'...

In most formal descriptions, the English paradigm ["am travelling", "is travelling", "are travelling"] is called 'present continuous' and it is said to be either (1) 'used' with 'present meaning' or (2) 'used' with 'future meaning' given that we can say both (1) "I am travelling now. I'll call you guys when I arrive." (present) or (2) "Sorry, I won't be able to join you guys because I am travelling on the weekend." (future).

In a functional theory, the 'uses' of a paradigm (a.k.a. 'functions') are what gets a name, not the paradigm. In functional descriptions, one says that there are different ways to represent a future action in English ("am travelling", "will travel", "shall travel"...) and there are different ways to represent a present action in English ("am travelling", "have been travelling"...). The fact that "am travelling" appears both in the 'future meaning' section and in the 'present meaning' section is due to the fact that the wording "am travelling" can be used to mean either 'future' or 'present'. It is not the name of the paradigm.

This is the reason why "agam" (am doing) is presented as an example of both "primary" and "secondary" tenses in this article. Saying this only means that "agam" (am doing) can be used both to indicate what is going on now (primary present) or what is going on while we are doing something else (secondary present). The secondary present carries a "simultaneity" feature of the secondary event. If we put the sentece "The alarm is still ringing as I am leaving the building." to the past, we will have "The alarm was still ringing as I left the building." because "is ringing" can construe either a primary or a secondary tense whereas "was ringing" usually construes a secondary tense and "rang" usually construes a primary tense. (Notice: 'usually') There is no classification of wordings for meanings outside of examples, outside of a context of discourse or outside of a context of situation.

The functional theory of tense has been applied to the description of Latin. For instance, researchers such as Aerts (since 2018) in his articles and Guerreira (2021) in his grammar book (both cited in the article) have been applying the functional theory of tense to the analysis of Latin texts. They are using the terms "absolute" and "relative" which are older versions of the terms "primary" and "secondary" in general linguistics as discussed in books reporting comparative studies on tense in the last 10-15 years (including Latin).

Given this extensive explanation, I would like us to close this discussion (a) because this is neither a 'double classification' of uses nor a 'double naming' of uses and (b) because there is the article Latin tenses where we already name the paradigms and list the uses of each paradigm. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 10:57, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

I would say "The alarm was still ringing as I was leaving the building" is the past version of the sentence you cite. Here the two actions are coextensive in time. (Of course it is also possible to say "The alarm was still ringing when I left the building", where "when I left" describes a punctual moment in time.) – I am very glad you have closed the discussion. Kanjuzi (talk) 20:50, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Kanjuzi's criticism 2: example and translation copy

@Kanjuzi criticised that All the Latin examples and translations are copied wholesale from the article Latin tenses..

@FloridaMan21, not all examples and translations were copied from Latin tenses, though many examples were. Some examples were searched in a corpus and added to the secondary and tertiary tense sections because there weren't any in the other article.

There is a good reason for using similar examples both here and in Latin tenses. Whoever is learning Latin or doing comparative studies between different languages can find both the overall organisation of uses in this article (semantics) and the overall organisation of verb paradigms in Latin tenses (forms and uses) and they will profit from the fact that the majority of examples occur in both articles. This means the article would not become any better if I open "PHI Concordance" website, search for other examples there to replace the ones already here.

I understand that Kanjuzi did a lot of work collecting examples and selecting translations, a work that I did not have to do. This means that this article profited from his. If there is any way to credit Kanjuzi for the examples and translations that he did, I would like to do this. However, it is false that this article is in any sense a copy of Latin tenses. You can very well check it out and you will see how the two articles are differet and you will notice that they serve different purposes.

@FloridaMan21, what should be done in this case? Replacement of examples due to authoral disputes or Kanjuzi's crediting for his previous work in the talk page? Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 11:14, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Kanjuzi's criticism 3: no citation of theory and application to Latin

@Kanjuzi criticised that The author's division of Latin tenses into "Primary", "Secondary Future", "Secondary Present", "Secondary Past" and "Tertiary", which the article adopts, appears to be entirely his own invention and not found in any authority on Latin. No reference is given for this division..

@FloridaMan21, this is not the case.

There are two compatible functional theories of semantic tense in linguistics. In an older functional theory, there are 'absolute tenses' (future, present, past) and there are 'relative tenses' ('priority', 'simultaneity', 'posteriority'). There is a more modern functional theory, where the absolute tense is called 'primary tense' and each degree of distantiation from the current situation gets a larger number: 'secondary tense', 'tertiary tense'... This is a Linguistic Theory irrespectively of language! It's a theory of whichever language, not theory of Latin language. And it provides a way of organising examples found in formal grammars based on the uses. Both the old version and the new version of the theory are cited in the article. In particular, I cite Halliday's introduction to functional grammar (2014) where the theory is fully explained, I inform the page where tense is described and I quote the text (Citation XII).

So it is false that the division of examples is entirely my invention. Kanjuzi is aware of this because we have discussed about this. The fact that he never read any of the quoted books where these terms happen does not imply that the terms do not exist. By the way, the terms "past-in-past" and "past-in-future" are used in the third paragraph of the article about Grammatical tense, which shows that authors of that article are using the modern terms of the functional linguistic theory.

Again, this is simply the new way researchers are referring to chained tenses when describing verb use. With corpora, we are able to find and describe less frequent linguistic phenomena such as tertiary and quaternary tenses. Since saying 'relative-to-relativie-to-relative-to-absolute tense' is less practical than saying 'quaternary tense', researchers are now preferring the latter term. It is simply that.

Moreover, the functioal theory has been applied to the description of Latin in both articles and grammar books as I have abundantly cited. So it is not true that these terms are not found in any authority on Latin. Kanjuzi knows that too because we already discussed about this.

@FloridaMan21, do you see the need of more citations where these terms appear? Which terms? Just tell me and I will provide the reference both in general linguistics and in Latin descriptions. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 15:17, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

"Tertiary tense" might well be a suitable description of the first tense in Caesar's sentence "the bridge had been broken earlier (fuerat interruptus) but had now been repaired (erat refectus)". However, there doesn't seem to be any author who actually uses the term "tertiary" with reference to this Latin tense, so it difficult to give any reference. Kanjuzi (talk) 21:20, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

If "present in the past" is a standard description found in reputable authorities for the tense "I was doing (at that time)", there needs to be a reference. It sounds very odd to me! Similarly for expressions such as "past in past", "past in present" etc. Which authorities use these terms?

It is unclear why you have placed habet subōrnātum in a different group from cognitum habeō. They are exactly the same tense in Latin.

It is unclear why you have put nātus fuit 'was born' in the group described as "had done". The exact meaning of this tense is debated by scholars, and it is not known whether it has roughly the same meaning as a pluperfect. Is "had done" a suitable description of the meaning? Kanjuzi (talk) 21:57, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Aerts applied the functional theory to Latin in multiple articles, but he explained the theory and the terminology in his doctor thesis "Latin tense and aspect in 3D: a corpus-based, systemic functional description of the narrative tenses in the language of Livy and Gregory of Tours". Check Page 53. He lists and defines the new terms there. In particular, he adapts Halliday's terms (which he is citing) from 'past-in-past' to 'past-before-past' and 'future-in-past' to 'future-after-past'. Since he is citing Halliday and places his work in Systemic Functional Linguistics (the subarea of functional linguistics that uses the new vocabulary), I prefer to use the original terms of the field instead of the ones in his thesis. The original terms are used by him and others in functional descriptions of Latin and functional comparisons of Latin to other languages.

Again, 'past-in-past', 'present-in-past' and 'future-in-past' are not new terms. They are popping up since early concordance-tool-assisted corpus studies in the nineties, but the corpus studies applying them to Latin are recent. These studies happened in the last 15 years.

As for the example nātus fuit ('had been born'), you are right that the translation to 'was born' was not good for a grammar article, especially so in the section about 'past-in-past' (which is the typical meaning of a pluperfect verb such as fēcerat ('had made')). In English, it is quite common to use a simple past when the primary past event is elided: for instance, after reducing 'Sophocles had been born before Euripides was born' to 'Sophocles had been born before Euripides', in English we tend to simplify the tense to 'Sophocles was born before Euripides'. This is why I did the first translation the way I did (which is fine for a book). But you are right. It is confusing in grammar description. For this reason, I have changed it. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 08:54, 11 August 2024 (UTC)