Three Dollar Quill

I'm not going to have a chance to do much today, because I was taking things easy, and then also watching a very silly movie. Let's have a look at the aspect-moods in Yucatec.

• Perfective: considering a completed action
• Imperfective: considering an ongoing or potential action
• Terminative: considering the consequences of an action, I think
• Progressive: considering a definite ongoing action
• Prospective: considering potential or ongoing actions
• Necessitive: considering a needed action
• Obligative: considering an action that must be carried out
• Assurative: considering an action that the speaker is assuring the listener will (did?) occur
• Desiderative: considering an action that the speaker wants to happen
• Penative: considering an action that nearly occurs
• Remote future: considering an action that happens with such remoteness that its happening is uncertain
• Proximate future: considering an action that happens soon after another action
• Immediate past: considering an action that happens soon before another action
• Recent past: considering an action that happens somewhat longer before another action
• Remote past: considering an action that happens long before another action

The basic set of aspects I had in mind for Dabupan were perfective, imperfective, prospective, terminative, repetitive, habitual. The moods I'd like to work with are indicative, imperative, subjunctive, honestly most of the moods up there seem pretty good, so I'll have to think about them more later.

One idea I'm toying with is decoupling temporal or causal "distance" from "direction", and perhaps representing that as some kind of connective.

This is all still really confusing. Maybe I'll understand things better after a few more reads (I still haven't read the paper all the way through), but I wonder if the "tenselessness" that I want to replicate is an emergent property of the language, rather than something I could just kind of, break up into distinct indepedent components and make sure they work on their own. It's possible the paper says so one way or the other, and I just haven't gotten to it or understood.

I get the impression that ideas of "tenselessness" and "temporal anaphora" are operating at a level of detail that I don't fully grasp. The distinctions seem subtler than I initially expected.

Okay, I have to stop now, it's super late and I'm not ready for bed.

Good night.