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Re: Subjunctives
- Subject: Re: Subjunctives
- From: Pycyn@aol.com
- Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 05:17:09 EST
I can't check with the Book right now, but my memory of how the tense and
aspects were intended to work is as follows.
1) tense and aspect are separated (and from mood and the like as well, all of
which are jumbled together in English and, historically at least, in most
familiar languages)
2) tense is based on axis and vector reference, though not restricted to the
four axes implicit in most natural systems (though never fully realized in
any).
3) The same cmavo are used for retro vector and past axis, for simultaneous
vector and present axis, and for pro vector and future axis. The differences
are positional and/or determined by context. Thus, pu might be either past
vector to the current axis or establishing a new axis prior to the current
one. Where the difference is too important to be left to context to decide,
capu would indicate the vector (brief glance back without chaning the focus
of the narrative) and puca the new axis (or maybe it is the other way 'round
-- I ermember this got argued and I forget which one, this seems most natural
to me at the moment).
4) Only axes are points, so that punctile clauses, like ca..., must apply to
axes, making bapu ca... unambiguous "event before the future event indicated
by ca..."
Of course, with a clearly future event, maybe even capu would work.
5) Aspects carry temporal implications but are not completely temporal.
Thus, the perfective of an event does entail that the event occurred in the
past (though even this can be doubted, since some maintain that the
inchoative does not entail that the event takes place in the future) but the
converse does not quite follow, for not all past events still throw their
aspectual shadows into the present (effects from causes, continued existence
of participants, ... -- the list varies in some unclear ways) as the
perfective seems to indicate.
6) So, in Lojban, past axis, retro vector and perfective aspect are all
slightly different and in different ways. But in English they tend to fall
together, certainly away from present tense, and thus sorting out which one
is meant by a given Englsh sentence is not subject to clear rules, except
that one must think what one means to say, both in the given sentence and in
those around it.
The perfective seems to involve relevance conditions, which are one of the
hairiest problems in possible world games (of which tense is one in the logic
business). For the contrary to fact cases being discussed, the best course
is to say every world exactly like this one except for the condition named in
the protasis (if....) and whatever is required by that change. So, clearly,
changing the world by having me possess a million just requires that I also
be shifted into the class of rich folk (I think -- a million just ain't what
it was anymore) and maybe nothing or very little else. Or does it: can I
have a million and still be a retired professor from a really cheap
university? Don't have to have had some source for that million and if so
what? So maybe the worlds can vary on the ways I got the million. But if
they vary too much, I come to doubt that this is still me they are talking
about. And, if I start to vary too much, does this not affect others around
me (wives and childen, etc., at least and students and colleagues and....).
Where does it end? Cut it off too soon and the world so little changed is
greatly changed (a retired professor gets a mill out of the blue); let it run
too far and it no longer seems to apply to me (or to be about this sort of
world at all).
Probably all that the original really means is that anyone with a million is
rich, perhaps with the added wish that I were one such. (And, of course, if
I were as rich as Rothschild, I'd be richer than Rothschild.)
Talk of possible worlds really brings up a point about my favorite (and
everybody else's least favorite) change, restricted quantification. As
Xorxes points out, "for every possible world w, if I have a million in w,
then I am rich in w" could be true just because there is no possible world in
which I have a million -- hardly an improvement on the material reading in
this world. On the other hand "in every possible world in which I have a
million, w, I am rich in w" looks only at the worlds in which I have a
muillion -- and says that there are some. Clearly the latter is much closer
to what is wanted, though even it may not be quite right (Lojban has the
means to do this, but does not use it for this purpose).
pc