From pycyn@aol.com Fri Sep 29 17:57:26 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: Pycyn@aol.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_0_3); 30 Sep 2000 00:57:25 -0000 Received: (qmail 15752 invoked from network); 30 Sep 2000 00:57:25 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 30 Sep 2000 00:57:25 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-r05.mail.aol.com) (152.163.225.5) by mta3 with SMTP; 30 Sep 2000 00:57:25 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-r05.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v28.24.) id a.12.2eb9816 (4553) for ; Fri, 29 Sep 2000 20:57:20 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <12.2eb9816.27069470@aol.com> Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 20:57:20 EDT Subject: Re: [lojban] symmetrie of tenses To: lojban@egroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 3.0 16-bit for Windows sub 41 From: pycyn@aol.com There are some important non-symmetrical features in the tense system -- in Lojban as in the world ;(). For example, the inchoative need not be followed by the event abuilding, while the perfective must be preceded by the event fading out. Something could prevent even the most verged on impending ... event, prevent it from happening at even the last moment. But only an event that happens has a perfective aspect. The time period of either external aspect need not be short: the inchoative aspect of the American Civil War has been said to begin in 1860 or the1840s or 1820 or 1789 or 1776 or 1609 or 1498 or 1492 or .... The same applies to perfectives, but it is usually easier to tell (although we can be wrong about it). We are, after all, in the perfective aspect of the Big Bang after 14 billion years or so. So neither "on the verge of" nor "has just" is a great translation in general though each may be right in a specific case. I do not think you can hook tensors on the aspects to say how long they last or how deep into them you are referring.