From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Thu Aug 19 12:09:31 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 19 Aug 1993 16:16:25 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 19 Aug 1993 16:16:21 -0400 Message-Id: <199308192016.AA22678@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 5572; Thu, 19 Aug 93 16:15:05 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 6191; Thu, 19 Aug 93 16:17:39 EDT Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1993 16:09:31 EDT Reply-To: "Robert J. Chassell" Sender: Lojban list From: "Robert J. Chassell" Subject: Re: Jorge and Veijo once more on ZAhOs X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: <9308191521.AA13793@albert.gnu.ai.mit.edu> (message from Jorge Llambias on Thu, 19 Aug 1993 11:19:01 EDT) Status: O X-Status: Jorge Llambias: In a way it boils down to something like this: When you look at a child, do you see the past or the future? Does an old man represent the past or the future? No, this is misleading, when concerned with ZAhO. The old man does not directly represent anything to do with time. Using {ba'o}, an old man is the aftermath of middle age. Past and future tense in the *usual* English meaning of the word `tense' has little to do with {ba'o} or {pu'o}---as little as it does with{na'onai} (atypically) or {zu'a} (left), both of which are Lojban tenses. Veijo says it well and accurately: A PU tense or a PU/ZAhO tcita tells WHERE (or rather WHEN) the event is, a ZAhO tense tells rather WHAT KIND (the phase of) the event is. The phase is actually the event we are talking about, the event located with the PU tense and characterized with the ZAhO 'tense'. There isn't anything else to look/go to. There is no *future event, no past event, we are talking about the phase event. Let me repeat that again: "There is no future event, no past event, we are talking about the phase event." It happens that the universe is such that people can translate between one way of viewing the universe, that involving phases, and another way, that involving time travel journeys, and the translations work well enough. ni'ota'o [[new topic; tangential information ("By the way")]] Does anyone know how translations are made between English and languages that do not use either event contours or English-style tenses, but use what in Lojban we call "spatial tenses"? Robert J. Chassell bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu Rattlesnake Mountain Road bob@grackle.stockbridge.ma.us Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA (413) 298-4725