Hvađ eru margar tíđir í íslensku og hvernig vitum viđ ţađ?
Útdráttur‘How Many Tenses Does Icelandic Have and How Do We Know?’
This paper discusses grammatical categories and their different realization in Icelandic and other langauges. One of the aims is to provide a basis for a linguistically informed discussion of grammatical categories relevant for Icelandic verbs. Some traditional Icelandic grammars distinguish up to eight different tenses in Icelandic, although Icelandic only has two tenses (past and present) that are distinguished by morphological inflection. After a general discussion of grammatical categories the properties of these constructions in Icelandic are investigated and compared to general ideas about moods and aspect. It is argued that most of these constructions have more in common with moods (and modal constructions) and aspects in other languages than with tenses. Because of complex interaction between the semantic classes of the verbs (the Aktionsart involved) and the typical meaning or role of the auxiliary constructions, it is no simple task, however, to come up with transparent names that capture the most important semantic variations involved. | ||||
