Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Wed, 12 Feb 92 19:27 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA22628; Wed, 12 Feb 92 19:24:20 EST Received: from cunixf.cc.columbia.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA11421; Wed, 12 Feb 92 17:16:11 -0500 Received: from cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu by cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (5.59/FCB) id AA22372; Wed, 12 Feb 92 17:15:48 EST Message-Id: <9202122215.AA22372@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.1) with BSMTP id 5351; Wed, 12 Feb 92 17:14:12 EST Received: by CUVMB (Mailer R2.07) id 7036; Wed, 12 Feb 92 17:12:07 EST Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1992 16:09:15 EST Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Deasil/widdershins X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Wed Feb 12 19:28:02 1992 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN (I copied this message from newlang, a list for developers and observers of the predicate language Voksigid, now under development by Bruce Gilson and others.) Jim Carter writes: > > >And don't forget deasil-widdershins, very > > >important. Bruce Gilson replies: > > Come again? "Deasil" I've never seen; "widdershins" I've seen but I don't > > know what it means. Or was that a joke? Jim Carter explains: > They are the helicity directions. Deasil is the direction the sun goes > around the land (in England, this being English), i.e. clockwise if the > clock is face up on the ground, or counterclockwise in the more usual > situation that you're looking straight at it. It corresponds to > negative angular change, i.e. Y to X with +Z being the spin axis, > and a standard handedness coordinate system. > > Widdershins is the opposite; the Earth itself spins in a widdershins > direction, with the Eurocentric axial direction. Standard screws > are widdershins. Being anti-sun it has underworld connotations. If you > walk (or dance the bransle grave) around a post with your left shoulder > nearer the post, you move in a widdershins direction. > > While in the macroscopic world the sign of the helicity is rather > arbitrary and confusing to remember, helicity is a physical absolute > in that (if I got all the signs right) only deasil neutrinos exist. Lojban does not have these spatial directions in its tense system. Should they be added? We just added "coincident", "north", "south", "east", and "west", so the list of FAhA (space direction) cmavo is still open. Here is the current list of Lojban direction tense words. Note that each has two translations given, one for static relationship and the other for motion. They fall into pairs for the most part. in front of forward behind backward on the left of leftward on the right of rightward above upward below downward within into surrounding orbiting transfixing passing through next to approximating bordering moving along the border of adjacent to contacting towards arriving at away from departing from inward approaching outward receding from tangential to passing by coincident with moving to coincide with north of northward south of southward east of eastward west of westward The last four were added to accomodate the cultures that use N-S-E-W as normal reference rather than speaker-centered directions like left-right-front-back. Navajo is perhaps the most well-known culture that does this. "inward" and "outward" refer to direction towards or away from the speaker's location, or whatever the origin is. "towards" and "away from" refer to direction towards or away from some other point. -- cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban