Subject: Re: translation exercise

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2001 01:39:30 -0000

--- In lojban@y..., "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@h...> wrote:
> 
> la jrc cusku di'e
> 
> >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?

Can you think of a case of actual retroactive preemption? 

Preemption is negative causality (Is it not?), and a cause must 
precede its effect. But not all assertions of temporal precedence 
entail causality. Post hoc sed non propter hoc. But "before" is used 
in both cases.

I think "before" gets the hypothesized "preemption" meaning as an 
important special case of temporal precedence--causality--and is 
essentially a matter of emphasis in English usage, and the ambiguity 
must be resolved from context. English is not yacc-able. Similarly, 
I suspect "B follows from A," which can be a purely logical 
relationship, is derived from metaphor based on temporal sequence, 
suggesting causality, which is easily conflated with the concept of 
implication in English usage and Volkgeist.

Of course, a quick check of the OED might lay all this to rest. Wish 
I had one handy.