Message-Id: <199509300502.BAA01684@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Sat, 30 Sep 1995 00:18:12 -0400
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      Re: tense conversions
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

The obviosu question - have you read the tense paper in the reference grammar
before trying this.  indeed, writing about any aspect of the grammar without
reading the appropriate refgrammar papaer is folly.

Second comment is that the English tenses generally do NOT have exact and
consistent Lojban equivalents, and I am thus wary of suggesting that any
of your suggestions are "right".  For one thing, they will lead to
great overexpression of tenses that are not needed or appropriate in Lojban.

Your suggested new
"tenses" are an excelllent example of the problem of looking for word for
word structure for structure mappings.  These are simply things that are
not conveyed in Lojban tenses as they are in English tenses.  Lojban on the
other hand conveys a lot of things in tense that English does not convey,
so many of your suggestions are not the ONLY applicable Lojban equivalent.

You would probably do better to go from all Lojban tense expressions to
some corresponding English expression, and then reverse and sort the results,
since there are more Lojban tenses.

But you also have to look into the modals, discursives, and attitudinals,
all of which have relevance to the types of distinctions you were trying
to convey in your proposed tenses.

lojbab