Tim32

Pete ^

Posted On Friday 1 November 2013 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

We have added the Perfect Progressive Aspect to Timlan. HUZZAH!!!

It has only taken us 2 hours to work out why it is useful. Work is also a noun, bear that in mind.

This has brought along a fairly important change also. You may be wondering why we have the Perfect aspect, the Perfect Progressive Aspect, but not Progressive Aspect? We DO have the Progressive Aspect, and it is now the default for all tenses, except the generic tense.

This does work nicely, as generally when you use what we might have called the "Simple" Aspect, you probably meant to use the Progressive Tense (I'm eating) or the Perfect Tense (I have eaten).

Naturally, using the Perfect Progressive Aspect in Timlan is as easy and using the Perfect Aspect in Timlan. In this case you just stick "pete-" at the start of the word.

For example:
ceveabus unafelem eiami lapopis eateht hat~s ei onafelem eiami tidela peteeateht hat~s ei
Please note that TCP does not support pete at this time

The example uses the rather unused "ceve-" - hello ceve! Ceve is the verb identifier for conjunctions, as most of you will not recall. The Perfect Progressive appears to be useful for distinguishing between a current state of operation, and a former state of operation, but where you are performing the same operation.

This is a pretty extreme example, because we can't think of many uses for this new Aspect, but we know it has uses, and that it seems to work.

This new Aspect is also useful when combined with Time Phrases, something Timlan has sadly little support for. You could, for example, say that you have been working for PI hours, but that you are working for 5 hours, meaning you have an irrational amount of time left to get on with it.

Because of the confusing nature of Aspects, and our lack of support for examples using them, this is a bit of an experimental thing (don't tell Muzer I said that), but we'll see how it goes when we are thinking about it in real life, doing real things, not trying to make up use cases, something we don't seem to be very good at describing to each other.

Final note, the short-name for this Aspect is "perfprog", in case you see that about the place.