Golboren - Verb Tense Reconstruction

So I learned from a Quora post that Turkish does not use the present perfect tense. Fascinated, I looked into other language groups and, if perfect tenses are missing, how they express specific timespans for actions and the events and the like. Turns out, there are many language groups without perfect tenses, and it does not limit their expression of specific thoughts and concepts.

This post is a great one that talks about varying tenses and functionality without them. Here is an excerpt from it:

"The following sentence, out of the blue, can be either past or present, through a quirk of verb morphology:
(7) When I put my books away, I set them on the shelf.
(7) can describe a past tendency, or a current one... out of the blue.  But you would hardly ever start a conversation with this sentence.   In a conversation, it would be more appropriate, but we would already have established if we were talking about the past or the present (or the future, using the present tense form!).  So in any realistic context, (7)'s ambiguity gets resolved immediately.  And that's the principle at work in tenseless languages."

I've hated the verb tenses in Golboren since I scrapped them together. The perfect ones, specifically, were awful. With the help of this new brain food, I've been motivated to now scrap the old perfect tense suffixes and refine the basic tense ones instead. Certain turns of phrase will now be developed to express ideas in an alternative way to the perfect tense.

Here is a verb sheet example of what the tenses looked like before. They were very confusing:

 Golboren
 English
 Present Active
 Ahonek
 Howls
 Present Passive
 Ahoneko
 is Howling
 Pres. Perfect
 Ahonesa
 has Howled
 Past
 Ahonok
 Howled
 Past Perfect
 Ahonosa
 had Howled
 Future
 Ahodo   
 will Howl
 Future Perfect
 Ahodosa
 will have Howled
 Misc.
 Ahoda 

 Ahon
 Howler 

 a/the Howl


They all looked a bit like one another, but too much so.  Here is an updated list of the tenses:


 Golboren
 English
 Present Active
 Ahonek
 Howls
 Past
 Ahonok
 Howled
 Future
 Ahonar   
 will Howl
 Misc.
 Ahoda 

 Ahodar
 Howler 

 a/the Howl

The Misc. section contains more possibilities than that depending on which verb is being profiled. Like the verb 'Dulga' which means 'Climb' may have -adai in its misc. section, which makes 'Dulgadai', 'Climbable.'

As of right now, I'm going back through all of the verbs I had on my Learn Golboren webpage and updating them to this new system. When I have more tone words developed, I will drop some examples of the perfectless system and how they specify things that we would use the perfect tenses for.

Addition to the Golboren Language

Alright, so I was shopping in Walmart, when, near the yogurt aisle, an epiphany hits me (because this is the kind of shit I think about when doing every day activities.) I was just sounding out random letter sounds and a lightbulb went off in my head. If languages/phonetics are not your thing, or this just gets boring, I have a one sentence summary at the end, so feel free to scroll down to the line that begins with "In short."

Phonetic/Grammar Summary

The Golboren language has two consonant grades: submissive and dominant. How this works is that each letter sound that is not a vowel is either weak or strong. Each weak letter has a stronger letter as its counterpart. When/why does this matter? The entire language works off of suffixes, and sometimes the suffix you have to plug into a certain word to mean what you need to mean creates a odd rhythm/sound or is just annoying to say.

Take Krig, for example:

Krig

This word means War in Golboren. K is the weak form of G (try saying these sounds out loud. You'll find K and G are pronounced with a very similar mouth formation.) Now, say you want to say something is war-born. Born of war. Or maybe you want to name your child Warborn. The -born suffix, predominantly used in names, is -uga, therefore:

Krig + -uga = Kriguga

But this sounds and looks strange. This is when strong and weak consonants come into play. Because -uga, with the g sound at its center, is considered a strong suffix, the base word will become weak. This results in the following word:

Krig + -uga = Krikuga

Now the base word is clearly distinguishable from its suffix. Now, see the comparison in the form of two example sentences, one with the correct word and one with the incorrect word.

Mut e mutal krikuga kuldut!
Mut e mutal kriguga kuldut!

Now, the full list of weak and strong couplings are as follows:  (strong on left, weak on right) (Also keep in mind that Goldboren do not use all of the letters/sounds we do.)

• B and P
• G and K
• D and T
• V and F
• Kh and H (Kh not used in English, aside from a scoffing noise)
• R and L
• M and N
• Z and S
• Zh and Sh (Zh not used in English. A hard vibrating buzz)
• Th and Th (Left: like in The, Right: Like in Thimble)

The Discovery

Near that yogurt wall, I'm mouthing sounds quietly to myself for ... well really, I don't have a reason. As I'm screwing with the sound of ch, like in church, a thought hits me like a slap in the face. If these others have a weak and strong form, then, what of Ch? "Oh my god," I thought, "It's J!"

Really. Say it aloud. For example, "Chew" and "Jew." J is the stronger form of Ch. What an overlooked little gem of phonetics!! So, because the ch is in use as a somewhat uncommon sound in conversational Golboren, I can begin to integrate J into the language! This opens the doors for so many intriguing possibilities!! I AM SO EXCITED!!

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

In short, I added the letter J to their alphabet.  I'm gonna make new words with that letter.

Thank you for viewing the blog and caring enough to check out my little discovery. Genuinely, thank you very much! Without someone to read my works or take interest in my little posts like this, what am I? Nothing! :)

You go on now and you have you a fantastic, amazing day/night!!

~ Matthew Damaru Hammond~

2014