Tense, aspect, & what?

[em3ry]

Tense + ???? + aspect. What I want to know is what is "????"?

(3)I AM going to be going to fix
(6)I AM going to be fixing...
(9)I AM going to be having fixed

(2)I AM going to fix...
(5)I AM fixing...
(8)I AM having fixed...

(1)I AM having been going to fix...
(4)I AM having been fixing... (i.e. I have been fixing)
(7)I AM having been having fixed...



The box represents the time period during which "fixing" is taking place. Time is moving in the direction of the arrows. The moment "I am", during which the speaker is speaking, is the present which is either 2, 5, or 8.

2 is an arbitrary moment before "fixing" has started.
5 is an arbitrary moment during which "fixing" is taking place.
8 is an arbitrary moment after the "fixing" has been completed.

(Changing "am" to "was" or "will-be" moves the entire thing into the past or future respectively.)

I started with the grammatical sentences and then regularized them to show the underlying pattern. This question isn't about English grammar. It's a question about tenses and aspects and whatever the other thing is.

[KathTheDragon]

The last three don't really parse as meaningful to me, so I doubt there's any good analysis of them. Of the first three, only "I am going to be fixing..." makes any sense, being a prospective progressive (thus, tense + aspect + aspect).

[Vardelm]

Like KathTheDragon, I have some trouble with this because some sentences aren't grammatical. All of them that use "having" are ungrammatical.

With that said, it looks like you are maybe trying to do a past, present, & future that is relative to "now" (the time the speaker says something), which is the middle 3 sentences. Then there is a past, present, & future relative to a "future" (the 1st 3 sentences) and the same for "past" (the final 3). Is that the case?

If so, perhaps do some reading on relative & absolute tense. Things get a little bit confusing because some aspects could be viewed as relative tense. For example, the "prospective" could be used in expressions like "I am gong to X" or "I was going to X". The first is a future relative to "now", while the second is a future relative to the past.

You could maybe rephrase these in this manner (not sure this is what you are intending...):


I will be going to fix. (This still doesn't make much sense; I'm not aware of languages that express a future in the future.)
I will be fixing.
I will have fixed.

I am going to fix.
I am fixing.
I have fixed.

I was going to fix.
I was fixing.
I had fixed.


Hopefully that's helpful, and if not at least maybe it will help us figure out what else you're looking for.

[bradrn]

I’d note that, though ‘aspect’ is the traditional name for both the perfect/prospective and perfective/imperfective categories, in English grammar at least they operate entirely independently. Thus, for instance, I had been fixing is past perfect imperfective, I will have fixed is future perfect perfective, and I am gonna fix it is present prospective perfective. (English even marginally allows combining the prospective with the perfect: ?I was gonna have been fixing it…)

[em3ry]

See the edit I made to the op.

[bradrn]

See the edit I made to the op.

I’m confused now. What, exactly, are you asking? Are your sentences even meant to be grammatical English, or are you just using English words to demonstrate a (non-English) linguistic point?

[em3ry]

I started with the grammatical sentences and then regularized them. This question isn't about English grammar. It's a question about tenses and aspects and whatever the other thing is.

[bradrn]

I started with the grammatical sentences and then regularized them. This question isn't about English grammar. It's a question about tenses and aspects and whatever the other thing is.

This helps a bit, but I’m still really confused. For one thing, your sentences don’t really show any ‘aspect’ distinctions at all, insofar as I generally take the term to refer to the perfective/imperfective distinction. It almost looks like you’re trying to stack relative tenses or something like that? Unless you can explain in words the semantics of your ‘other thing’, I’m not sure I’ll be able to help all that much.

[Vardelm]

I started with the grammatical sentences and then regularized them.

I think that's not useful; it just confuses the situation, unfortunately.

See the edit I made to the op.

Changing "am" to "was" or "will-be" moves the entire thing into the past or future respectively.

I take it that's... not what you want?


Based on that, I would re-phrase again:

I am going to be going to fix.
I am going to be fixing.
I am going to have fixed.

I am going to fix.
I am fixing.
I have fixed.

I have been going to fix.
I have been fixing.
I had fixed.


Better?

I'm still trying to understand what you're looking for, but maybe this will be closer. If so, it seems like what you're after is several different aspects working in conjunction, or perhaps with "relative tense" thrown in, which can also be viewed as aspects.

[zompist]

The picture seems relatively clear, though I can't quite relate the numbers to your text examples.

The problem I see is that you're treating "going to fix" and "having fixed" as processes, when they're not. There's no early and late stages of "going to fix"; it's a binary state. What's a process is fixing the thing. You can talk about the beginning, middle, and end of that process.

There are some standard terms for all these things:
imperfective - focusing on the process - "I am fixing the printer"
inceptive - start of the process - "I started fixing it"
completive - end of the process - "I just fixed the printer"
perfective - process is seen as a point event - "I fixed the printer"

It seems that you may be interested in dividing up past and future more precisely. English does this with "I will fix it" vs. "I'm about to fix it". Some languages have a recent past, normal past, and historical past. Or even more pasts.

I'm not sure there's an accepted term for near-future constructions like "I'm about to fix it" and near-pasts like "I just fixed it".

[em3ry]

number 4 is simply "I have been fixing". I just extended that pattern and regularized it.

[Vardelm]

number 4 is simply "I have been fixing". I just extended that pattern and regularized it.

Why?

[bradrn]

I think I sorta see what’s going on with this picture now:

(2) ‘gonna fix’ — event is after speech act, speaker viewpoint is during event
(4) ‘have been fixing’ — event is during speech act, speaker viewpoint is after event
(5) ‘been fixing’ — event is during speech act, speaker viewpoint is during event
(6) ‘gonna be fixing’ — event is during speech act, speaker viewpoint is before event
(8) ‘have fixed’ — event is before speech act, speaker viewpoint is during event

Is this correct?

(I can’t quite shake the feeling that the arrows are a bit jumbled — it feels wrong that ‘gonna be fixing’ is to the right of (5), but ‘gonna fix’ is to the left.)

[em3ry]

The box represents the time period during which "fixing" is taking place. Time is moving in the direction of the arrows. The moment "I am", during which the speaker is speaking is speaking, is the present which is either 2, 5, or 8.

2 is an arbitrary moment before "fixing" has started.
5 is an arbitrary moment during which "fixing" is taking place.
8 is an arbitrary moment after the "fixing" has been completed.

[bradrn]

The box represents the time period during which "fixing" is taking place. Time is moving in the direction of the arrows. The moment "I am", during which the speaker is speaking is speaking, is the present which is either 2, 5, or 8.

2 is an arbitrary moment before "fixing" has started.
5 is an arbitrary moment during which "fixing" is taking place.
8 is an arbitrary moment after the "fixing" has been completed.

…then what are 1,3,4,6,7,9?

[em3ry]

then what are 1,3,4,6,7,9?

They are the time periods that the speaker is referring to.

4 is "I have been fixing (something)". The speaker is referring back to the time period during which he was fixing something which extends from the beginning of the box up to 5.


(1)I AM having been going to fix...
(2)I AM going to fix...
(3)I AM going to be going to fix

(4)I AM having been fixing... (i.e. I have been fixing)
(5)I AM fixing...
(6)I AM going to be fixing...

(7)I AM having been having fixed...
(8)I AM having fixed...
(9)I AM going to be having fixed

[em3ry]

All this is complicated by the fact that when you switch to the past tense you also switch the direction of the verb.

I am going to fix.
I am fixing.
The car is fixed.

Hence the use of "having fixed" and "having been" in the posts above.

[Moose-tache]

At first I thought it was a typo, but no. You put "going to" after the thing it describes and "have been" before the thing it describes. If I swap those, and translate your grammar from Indian English, I think I understand what you're asking.

The thing is, applying a second layer of aspect on top of an existing layer of aspect doesn't create some new thing. It's just more aspect. Similarly, I could create a Russian nesting doll of tenses (e.g. the point right after just before a thing used to happen), but it's still just tense.

Maybe we could define our terms, since people in this thread have used the term aspect to mean different things. Aspect could be as simple as a binary perfective/imperfective distinction, but that would only be useful for internal grammars. As a cross-linguistic phenomenon, aspect requires a looser definition. I prefer to think of aspect as temporal shape. In that sense, everything em3ry has described that isn't tense, is aspect.

[em3ry]

You put ... "have been" before the thing it describes

"I have been fixing" (#4) describes the entire time period from the start of the fixing until the moment marked with a 5. The statement itself is made by the speaker at the moment marked with a 5. The speaker is looking back at what he has been doing.

"have been" is therefore not before the thing it describes.

perhaps you are confused because you think that the fixing takes place at the moment marked with a five. As I said before the act of fixing is represented by the entire black box that contains the numbers 4, 5, & 6

At the moment marked with a five he is fixing and has been doing so for sometime (#4) and will continue to do so for sometime (6).

[zompist]

The box represents the time period during which "fixing" is taking place. Time is moving in the direction of the arrows. The moment "I am", during which the speaker is speaking is speaking, is the present which is either 2, 5, or 8.

2 is an arbitrary moment before "fixing" has started.
5 is an arbitrary moment during which "fixing" is taking place.
8 is an arbitrary moment after the "fixing" has been completed.

OK, this makes your diagram clearer. But it doesn't make it any clearer what the difference is supposed to be between 1/3 and 7/9.

Before 4, no fixing has happened. In both 1 and 3 the fixer is sitting there doing nothing; it doesn't really matter if the speaker at 2 is looking back or forward in time. Your use of the perfect for 1 ("I AM having been going to fix...") is just confusing.

The only thing different about 3 is that it's closer to 4. In English we could distinguish this as "he's about to fix it" vs. "He will fix it (later)".

I assume this is for a conlang. Rather than keep trying to express these odd distinctions in pseudo-English, maybe you could give an example of how and why your conlang's speakers distinguish 1/3 or 7/9.