Modal Verbiage

When it came to the partitive in Finnish (with it's little detour into Italian), I was less than pleased with the native's explanatory attempts and less so with that of the textbook. Eventually, I went online and printed out every long, lengthy, overdone explanation of the idea until finally it made sense in my head.

There's a certain level in my mind where I need to make things make sense. I'm finally getting to a level in some of my pursuits where, not only do I sometimes need to have something explained more fully to reach that level, I sometimes need to sit down, concentrate, and make a strong mental effort to get my mind around it.

Oddly enough, I always thought that was just a weird way to speak of learning... never really understood it. I knew that it sometimes happened to less intelligent people with easier things, and pitied them. I knew it sometimes happened to super-geniuses with their original theories, and respected them. But I didn't realize it would actually happen to me before I was out of high school. :P

It happened in Spanish the other day with the future uses of the Subjunctive, for example. "Voy a decirte, tan pronto como ella venga." It means, "I'm going to tell you, as soon as she comes." The subjunctive is, loosely, used to demonstrate subjectivity. So in my mind scheme, the first part would be subjective, since it depends on the second.

But no, it's the second part which is in subjunctive. Eh? I wish I could just memorize that and be done with it, but it doesn't make sense to me. Kiser says that of course 'I'm going to tell you", it's the condition, 'her coming', which is uncertain. You can't be sure it will happen, it's in the future.

But then how can Spanish express anything in the future without the subjunctive? Future could carry a certain amount of doubt along with it inherently, but why would this inherent room for possibility and change be implied in some usages, but not others? I would use it for everything or nothing, according to that line of thinking, but then, I didn't invent the language.

"Voy a decirte, tan pronto como ella venga."

So they should both be in subjunctive. Or neither one should be. But if you're going by degrees of subjectivity, a rather subjective matter in of itself, then I would still, incorrectly, choose to make the first part subjunctive and the second part indicative.

Even with all the hazy 'whys' of the subjunctive aside, even looking at this one isolated construction, I have to ask - How can something that depends on something 'subjective' be objective? If it depends on something that is uncertain, how can it be certain? How can the indicative rely upon the subjunctive?

I think I'll ask Altadonna about this tomorrow. For now I'm just speculating. For Spanish, fortunately, I have the luxury of asking my elders. :D Norwegian is another matter entirely.

Skulle. Bør. Burde.

Should. Should. Should.

Which one is which? At first I thought it was the only tangle in the mercifully similar to English modal system. I was wrong. It only opened the door, and wasn't itself resolved in the process! Books skirt the subject as if it were of no importance. Evan wouldn't give me a decent answer, and neither would Svein. Lene gave it her best shot, and I was content with her explanation for a while. Then, the more I thought about it, I couldn't think of any situation under her system in which I would be able to use Skulle. And, as Skulle is a word, there must therefore be a flaw in the system as I understood it.

So finally I found this way too linguistic and scholarly artical, online, about all the Norwegian modal verbs and their being "Epistemic vs. Non Epistemic, Quotative vs. Assertive vs. Probabilitive vs. Speculative, Partly Dynamic Deontic - Partly Epistemic, Dynamic vs. Deontic, Compulsative vs. Colitive vs. Intentive vs. Abilitive, Necessitive vs. Appropriative vs. Possibilitive, and Directive vs. Hortative vs. Permissive"

Yeah, it makes me want to die inside. But it actually goes fairly slowly, actually provides enough information to crack it's own code. And I firmly believe that if I give it a little time, go at it with a clear, unhurried mind, throw at it all of my pitiful self taught linguistic background and knowledge of Latin roots, and try to use my common sense, I will come out of it understanding Skulle, Bør, Burde, and the rest, and even learn some useful new words in the process.


Forget memorizing dates, formulas, or vocabulary lists. THIS is learning.