From LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:50:14 2010 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 3 Aug 1993 19:23:30 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 9147; Tue, 03 Aug 93 19:22:19 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 8539; Tue, 03 Aug 93 19:23:50 EDT Date: Tue, 3 Aug 1993 19:20:49 EDT Reply-To: bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu Sender: Lojban list Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was bob@GRACKLE.STOCKBRIDGE.MA.US From: bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU Subject: On the tense system of ZAhO X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu, bob@grackle.stockbridge.ma.us To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: Jorge LLambias's message of Tue, 3 Aug 93 12:32:25 EDT <9308031632.AA09759@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu> Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Ukn Aug 3 19:23:31 1993 X-From-Space-Address: bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU Message-ID: My apologies, I wrote in a confusing manner about ZAhO and failed to explain why spatial and PU tenses start at the speaker's location, but ZAhO tenses start at the event's location. Let's try again, The spatial example in the Imaginary Journey paper is: le nanmu va batci legerku The man [medium distance] bites the dog. ...If you want to get from the speakers location to the location of the bridi, journey for a medium distance... As Jorge says, correctly, For space tenses we don't start at the speaker's *event* location, but their actual location in space. Let us separate speaker from fighter: da damba He fights. Add a spatial tense: da zu'a damba He, to the left of me, fights. Clearly, the location needs a place from which to refer, and the only one that works is to make the reference to the speaker. (Parenthetically, we might note that, in a sense, da zu'a damba is a short form of da damba zu'a le stuzi be mi he fights to the left of the location of me. ) Consider a temporal tense: da pu damba he fought (and may still be fighting). To find out when he fought, go from the speaker's location in time to the past. That is when he fought. We all agree about this. (Parenthetically, you might consider, if you wish, da pu damba as a short form of da damba pu le nu mi cabna He fights [earlier] the event of me being simultaneous (with some time not specified). ) Now consider the {pu'o} inchoative state of the process: da pu'o da He [inchoative] fights. He is on the verge of fighting. Here is what I am trying to get at: We attempt to start with the speaker's location in time. But we have a problem. {pu'o} *cannot* itself refer to the speaker. The speaker is not inchoative; it is the event that is inchoative. If you refer to the inchoative time of the speaker, you are likely referring to some time before the speaker was born. This is not the intent of the utterance. For {pu'o}, you must start from the *event* location. The ZAhO event contours really are *different* from the PU and spatial tenses. We must go to the `inchoative' time of the fight; this means go to the time before the process of the fight began. This is *before* the fight. Jorge says: And you can't follow that kind of directions if you have something like: mi pu pu'o damba (I was going to fight, or I was in the verge of fighting) You can, but only if you recognize that there are two types of direction. Let's follow them: 1. For {pu}, work from the speaker's point of view. I was ... 2. for {pu'o}, work from the event's location in time. ... at the inchoative aspect of the fight. Combine these two and get: I was at the inchoative aspect of the fight. I was on the verge of fighting. Jorge says: I start at speaker's time, go to the past, and from there have to go to the future. No, you do not `go to the future'. This is a fundamental misconception. With event contours, you do not have a `future' as we think of it. You have different states. It happens that an inchoative state preceeds an event (at least in this universe, without time paradoxes), so there is a very good correspondence between what follows an inchoative state and the future, but the event contours are not talking about the future or the past as you and I usually think of them. > le tricu pu'o crino > The tree that I have in mind is in the inchoative state of greening. > > This sentence is making at least two claims: > > * a claim that greening for this tree is a process with a time > before its beginning, a beginning, an occurence (which may be > spread over time), an end, and a time after the end. > Is this true? The sentence claims that there will be a time after the greening in which the greening ceased? Let me try to be more clear: the sentence makes a claim about the essential nature of reality, that the tree is part of a process which does have all those characteristics, including a state in which the greening ceased. The sentence does not claim that that state is reached or will be reached. The sentence also makes the claim that it is true that this tree is in the state before it greens. The sentence is false the tree is not in this state. (This latter claim is the predication and is the one with which a reader is usually concerned.) The simple English sentence, `The tree was brown.' makes an equally grand metaphyscial claim: namely that the tree belongs to a universe that has a past, present, and future, and that the tree will be part of a future. But the English sentence says nothing about what state the tree will be in in the present or future...it may be green, burned, cut or vaporized.... The tense system of English, Russian, or Lojban makes very big claims about the nature of the universe. Jorge: ... If so, then the tenses are much more specific than what I thought. Yes. They are. But most of the time, we think it doesn't matter. How would I say that the tree will begin to be green in the future without saying anything about what happens after that? You cannot say that if you use event contours. Event contours don't say "what happens after" in any specific sense, but do carry with them the notion that the state you are talking about is one of several states. If you want to avoid implying anything about the nature of a process, then you need to use a different form of tense, one that claims there is a past, present, future, but not that anything happens within, before, and after a process. This does the job: le tricu ba crinu cfari The tree I have in mind will green-begin. > le rokci punai je canai je ba crinu > The rock I have in mind was not, is not, and will be green. > > This latter sentence is *not* claiming that greening of a rock is a > process. The sentence is claiming only that the rock is not now, was > not, but will be green. (Perhaps because I am going to paint it.) > (Most of us agree as a matter of physics that greening, even if by > painting, is a process, but this particular sentence is not claiming > that.) > I thought that the only difference was that the one about the tree claims that there is a beginning of the greening, while the other claims nothing about a beginning (which could exist). ZAhO and PU really are different, fundamentally so. This is why Lojban has the two. I was not aware that the first one also claims an end to the process. ZAhO tenses talk about a universe in which there are processes with different states. This is parallel to PU, but in a different way. PU tenses talk about a universe in which there is a past, present, and future. It does not make any sense to talk about a past unless you have other times to compare and contrast. This extra meaning does nothing to justify a relation between pu and pu'o though. The two ways of looking at time tenses produce close matchings. {pu} occurs before the present; {pu'o} is a state that preceeds the on-going event. > .... The English "will be" implies "was not, is not" but > the lojban "ba" does not. I did not know that the English claimed so much. You are right; English does not always claim so much. It depends on context. However, I have found that if I say, "George will be in London," most of my friends will presume that he is not there now, unless they know he lives there or has already traveled there. > le rokci ba co'a crinu > The rock I have in mind will begin the process of being green > (it may or may not end it). > > This suggests that the green of the rock is a process, an > occurrence with an internal structure including a beginning, a > middle, and an end; and that you have to take an imaginary journey > into the future to get to the beginning of the event. > So now the imaginary journey doesn't start at the event? My apologies, my statement was not very clear. The utterance contains two different tenses, PU and ZAhO. * First, you have to use the PU directions and work from the speaker's point of view. * Second, you have to work from the event's point of view and go to the initiation of the event. After completing both steps, you have `in future, the beginning'. Also you contradict yourself. You say that the greening is a process with an end, but you also say that the rock may or may not end being green. Which one is it? (I think the last one.) There are two types of claim here; I am sorry, I blended them. The first is the claim about the essential nature of reality, a metaphysical claim. The second is the claim about the truth of the sentence, the veridical claim. A metaphysical claim is about the essential nature of reality: with PU tenses, the claim is that reality has a past, present, and future; with ZAhO tenses, the claim is that processes in reality have a time leading up to the process, a time during the process, and a time after the process stops. The veridical claim of the sentence is whether the sentence is true or false. The sentence is true if the rock will begin the process of greening. It does not matter to the veridical claim if the universe ends before the rock stops greening. The utterance is making no claim about that. Look at this in spatial terms: "I will touch the front of the book." By using the word "front" I am implicitly talking of a universe in which books also have "backs". The metaphysical claim is that books have backs. But the sentence does not say anything about the back; I am making no veridical claim about the back. (A front without a back is like the sound of one hand clapping, a notion that can inspire the mind, like a Mobius strip.) Jorge; I'm not claiming [pu'o] is a future tense. I'm claiming that it makes reference to an event in the future of the speaker, just like ba. Ah! That is not my understanding at all. Different reference point. The focus is on the type of state, in this case inchoative. The event itself may or may not start or `initiate'. If you make the assumption that the event will initiate, then the state is in the past of the event. True, you can often `get away' with thinking from a speaker's reference point, and that is often the context of the utterance, but that is not the basis for the ZAhO tenses. ... For the ZAhO, to make sense of the etymology you have to take the event as the reference point, ... Yes, you are right. ... which is inconsistent and confusing. Certainly confusing, and inconsistent with the pattern of the other tenses. But I think this is accurate. ZAhO must be event centered, unlike PU, which is speaker centered. > pu'o, ca'o, and ba'o are different from pu, ca, and ba. But like > them, they make a fundamental claim about the nature of the physical > and mental universe. > > pu'o, ca'o, and ba'o claim that events have contours and > structure involving a beginning, middle, and end; If this is true, then most of the examples I've seen are tranlated incorrectly. Yes, I think you are right. `Easily misunderstood' might be a better way of putting it. And as a practical matter, usually the misunderstandings are unimportant. The reason that people can make the `incorrect' translations is that the metaphysical claims appear insignificant. They appear no more significant than my suggestion that a book has a back if I talk about its front. Usually such a suggestion is irrelevant. People may not be aware that they are making it. But I would be hard put to explain `front' to someone who lacked the concept without also somehow (perhaps implicitly) including the concept `back' in the exposition. Similarly with `future'; I would be hard put to explain the idea without a concept of sequential time with a past and a present. The idea of `front' in English comes mixed with `back'; the notion of `back' is there even if you don't talk about it. Jorge: My interpretation: pu'o claims that the event is about to begin, at the reference time. I would not say `about to begin', but rather `in a time (time duration not specified) leading up to the initiation of the process'. This more wordy gloss avoids the notion that the event has a specific location in sequential time. ba'o claims that the event has ceased, at the reference time. I would say, `the time is in the aftermath state, after the process stops, (time duration not specified)'. {pu'o}, {ca'o}, and {ba'o} are about states; an event can be a state, of course, but more often people think of an event as a point. pu claims that the event is at the past of the reference time. ca claims that the event is at the present of the reference time. ba claims that the event is at the future of the reference time. Yes. Nobody has commented on my diagrams. Are they misleading? pu ---------XXX----------0-----------------------------> ca ---------------------X0X----------------------------> ba ----------------------0-------------XXX-------------> I think these PU diagrams are OK, but disagree with the diagrams for {pu'o}, {ca'o}, and {ba'o}. Jorge's diagram: pu'o ----------------------0-------|===========>---------> 0 reference point | boundary of event ===> event (duration implied) This diagram pulls my eye to a reference point and to the event process. With a {pu'o} event contour, your focus is on the state leading up to the process. A single reference point is not part of the concept; and the focus is not on the event process. In this diagram, I am using `XXX's to draw attention: pu'o ....XXXXXXXXXXX|++++++++|------------.... XXX focus: state leading up to the process (no duration implied) +++ another state, the process (no duration implied) --- another state, the aftermath (no duration implied) | boundary of event Best wishes. Robert J. Chassell bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu Rattlesnake Mountain Road (413) 298-4725 Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA