Re: Tense and Aspect (was Re: Wow!...)
Saul Epstein 
Tue, 9 Dec 1997 13:07:28 -0600

From: Rob Zook <rzook*informix,com>
Date: Tuesday, December 09, 1997 11:08 AM

>At 05:03 PM 12/8/97 -0600, Saul wrote:
>>
>>> Well, I did not think it "complete" enough. It seems logical enough
>>> if we can flesh it out more.
>>
>>It may seem less logical as its complexity becomes more apparent.
>
>Well, I just finished reveiwing the tense aspect system for Lojban
>and now I'm really disappointed in the Vulcan system. <sigh> More
>so since I'm not sure what we should do about it. I still have a
>feeling it's more a lack of completeness than anything. However, now
>I tend to agree with you that I don't like combining tense, aspect
>and mode together with one infix for one particular meaning.

What is amusing, and for which the professor deserves additional respect, is
that mixed systems are entirely natural.

>I say:
>>> >>s'at cta va'num ongo s'kalv,djuna s'deelu
>
>Saul says:
>>> >    va'numka cta'ehi; kalvnama s'at deeluha
>>> >
>>> >    find-! fact-PLUR; distort-PERM thou-GEN pleasure-DAT
>>>
>>First, I missed something: cta'ehi should be fact-PLUR-ACC. Second,
>>-ma is the permissive suffix, analagous to English "may." I probably
>>followed Twain's grammar more closely than he intended, to be sure.
>>But requests and suggestions often take the imperative. And the
>>English imperative construction is simply VO, with S deleted and V in
>>the second person.
>>
>>I used the dative in a semi-creative fashion. A close paraphrase
>>might be something like "to your liking." The original Twain quote
>>uses "as much as," which is a comparative construction that we're not
>>equipped for yet.
>
>We do have one comparitive grammer structure: equals. I tried to use the
>"distort" and "pleasure" as descriptions to use the X Y comparative order
>grammer. X Y means X = Y.

It may be more accurate to say "X Y" means "X relates to Y," with the
relationship depending somehow on context. Because it can also mean "Y of
X."

>Now about the accusitive case, I'm not sure
>that's neccessary here. My knowledge of has deteriated a bit on the
>details so maybe if you explained a little on how this case works
>in English I could see it.

Giving examples of cases in English is difficult because our inflexion is
severely deteriorated. It's most obvious with pronouns though:

I see him.
1SNOM [to see]1SPRES 3SACC

(That is, "first-person singular nominative, 'to see' first-person singular
present, third-person singular accusative.")

We still "decline" pronouns in Standard, so while "I see he" is perfectly
clear, it's not regular. In place of declension we rely in word order. "Him
see I" or "Him I see," etc., are also clear because of the vestigial
inflexion, but aren't regular because the word order system is preferred. In
any case, because we don't decline all other nouns, we have to rely on word
order for things like, "The pitcher threw the ball."

He sees me.
3SNOM [to see]3SPRES 1SACC

Here, the first person pronoun takes the accusative to show that it is
what's being seen, while the third person pronoun takes the nominative to
show that it is what sees.

Vulcan, though it has a "typical" word order, does not use that order to
mark a sentence's parts of speech. Rather it uses word order to control
emphasis. This flexibility of order would make case markings compulsory (as
far as I know) with the exception of the near-compound construction in which
an unmarked term somehow describes a term immediately following. This seems,
incidentally, to suggest that what might be called adjectives are simply
entities unmarked for case, just as entities may be action/states unmarked
for tense-aspect. The potential fluidity is really quite breath-taking.

>The rest of your revision I think I accept as at least the best
>we can do now. Except that you left out the future tense which could
>translate as the "then" in this case. So I would say then:
>
>va'numkaa s'at cta'e; kalv,djunama s'at deeluha

I think that works. The permissive can be sort of timeless, so adding a
future just means "you will be able to" in the future, rather than "you are
able to" in general. And we should probably both prefix s' to the verb in
the second clause.

But do you see that, by not marking "cta'e," your sentence begins with the
speaker ordering some second person's facts to find something, without ever
saying what?

--
from Saul Epstein
liberty*uit,net
http://www,johnco,cc,ks,us/~sepstein
"Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi suraketca'."
                                        -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at