Subject: Re: translation exercise

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2001 01:51:34 -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?

Isn't preemption a form of negative causality? And a cause must 
temporally precede its effect. Therefore, there can be no "before" 
that doesn't temporally precede.

But, there can be precedence without causality. Post hoc sed non 
propter hoc. Causality is a special case of temporal precedence. 

Usage of "before" can entail both cases. Its largely a matter of 
emphasis, and the ambiguity must be resolved from context. 

I think that causality and time-sequence are commonly conflated in 
English, much as causality and implication are. "It follows that" 
looks like an assertion of temporal sequence, but is used to mean a 
purely logical (timeless) relationship.

Maybe an OED could resolve this. Wish I had one here.

-jrc