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Re: [lojban] Re: translation exercise
At 11:22 PM 10/4/01 +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:
>Apparently "before" is ambiguous in that it can signal preemption, or
>temporal precedence, or both.
I think the preemption is not really a part of "before". If you
say that X happens before any Y happens, and it is in the nature
of X that its happening prevents Y from happening, then naturally
X happening before Y preempts Y from happening. But this only
works when we already know that X will prevent Y, and it is just
a consequence of the temporal precedence. If the meaning of
preemption was part of "before", then you should be able to say
"X before Y" meaning that X preempts Y when normally X would
not preempt Y. Can you think of any such case?
I'm not sure, but the example I've been thinking of is the perverse
converse where capturing would not prevent anything, and might
enable. John and George are convicts in the same prison. John escapes,
but is recaptured because George gives the warden information about his
plans. Then we can say "John was captured before he killed someone
(George)" and we have the non-preventive meaning. Indeed it is plausible
that John could not have killed George UNLESS he was captured.
lojbab
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lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org