Message-Id: <199512091929.VAA11055@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sat, 9 Dec 1995 18:37:51 +0000
Reply-To: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject:      Re: TECH: situation types
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 1935
Lines: 41

Lojbab
> > Duration (achiev v. the rest) is not that important.
> I don't see duration as being that much a focus of achievements/point
> events. It is rather more aspectual - how you look at the event. If
> you think of it as a "point" between a before and after thant are
> non-points, then it is a point event.

Any bounded situation (whether the boundaries are accidental or intrinsic)
can be viewed as punctual - just as with physical objects. If you view
it as punctual then you view it as without duration - as without extent
in your field of view.

This is not all there is to achievements, because all achievements have
result states, while not all situations viewed as punctual do. But as I
said, I don't find the distinction between achievements and other
types very useful, and I don't see much benefit to debating what the
term means in linguistics.

> In many theories, the K/T boundary wherein the dinosaurs died out

How come K stands for Cretaceous?

> had a duratiion of at least many human lifetimes, but it is still
> seen as a point event because we don't concern ourselves with ANY
> substructure. As an event, we don't think of it beginning and ending
> - it just "happens". That same K/T "achievement" though may come to
> be looked at under some theories as having a substructure - say a
> meteor strike, followed by a "nuclear winter" phenomena, in which
> the event is looked at more as a "process". It is this ability to
> look at the same event in more than one way that >I< came to see
> as being its most valuable feature to the language.

Of course you're right that we can conceptualize things in different
ways. Where you're wrong is in thinking there's anything special
about situation types in this respect, and in thinking that lojban
is any different from other languages in this respect. I can believe
{koa mue i koa puu i koa zirpu i koa brifu i koa cecmu i mua cui cai}
- but so what?

---
And