From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:46:19 2010 Reply-To: ucleaar Sender: Lojban list Date: Sat Dec 9 14:19:22 1995 From: ucleaar Subject: Re: TECH: situation types X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Sat Dec 9 14:19:22 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Message-ID: 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