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response to jimc on ZAhO

jimc writes:
>I don't remember the exact context, but in both Old Loglan and in Lojban
>a tense on a sumti-tail (S-bridi) gives this flavor.  The Lojban
>possibilities are much richer -- see selma'o <ZAhO>.  For example:

[I discuss these below, so won't repeat them twice]

>The first two show off <ZAhO>; I hope their syntax is similar to BAI-PU.
>But they don't really address your problem, which number 3 does.  I hope
>number 3 is syntactically valid.  Number 4 seems to fit my prejudices
>better for how to represent this meaning.

You are correct as to syntax, though somewhat off the mark as to
semantics.  I don't blame anyone for erring in that, (not even jimc %^),
since those semantics have not ever really been written up.  Why?
Because the concepts are very un-English, and where they overlap with
English, they do so in ways that average English speakers won't
recognize because they are not all that aware of the semantics implicit
in English tense.

I won't try to cover them here either, though I'll mention a couple of
things.

1) Some good examples may be found in the discussion a couple weeks ago
on pc's translation of an aphorism

2) The definition of the members of ZAhO are closely tied to the
structure of Aristotelian events.  Most of these have no exact English
counterpart.  "pu'o" (inchoative) has some similarities to the 'future'
interpretaion of "presently", but can be used more loosely for 'future
perfect'.  "ba'o" matches fairly more closely with English 'past
perfect'.

3) To understand these involves thinking about what pc calls 'event
contours':

a) a point event (achievement abstract) has the contour of a point
a single spike when the event starts and ends;                        _|_

  the beginning is the middle is the end, one word "co'i" covers
  the 'point' as a tense, although there is a before (pu'o) and an
  after (ba'o)

b) a state has a beginning and an end, and during a state-event the   ___
predicate is 'smooth' and continuous with no substructure           _|   |_

  a state therefore has a before (pu'o) an after (ba'o) and a during
  (ca'o), as well as two point-events - an initiative (co'a) and
  a cessitive (co'u) to mark the points of discontinuity

c) an activity looks very much like a state, except that it has a
substructure,  each element of which might have its own contours    _|||||_

   all the words for states apply

d) a process evolves through stages which might be subprocesses, or
activities, etc.  But unlike the other events a process has a starting
state and a natural ending state, and MAY not proceed to that natural
ending or may continue too long.

   This leads to a complex contour, as the diagram shows.

                                                             co'u
                                            ___ ------ _______
                                        ___/   |      |za'o   |
                                     __/       |______|___
                                  pu'o |  ca'o |      |ba'o
                                      co'a   co'u    mo'u
pu'o is the time leading up to the process (the getting ready/anticipation)
    the start of which is the initiation (co'a)
ca'o is the time during the process
ba'o is the time after the process stops (the aftermath)
    but a process may stop when naturally completed (mo'u) or it may stop
    incomplet or it may continue too long.  Whenever it does stop,
    whether 'complete' or not is the cessitive (co'u), and if it continues
    too long, the time in which the process so overreaches is called the
    superfective (za'o)

Examples for all of these will have to wait - they are difficult in
English - you may be able to deduce some from what I've given, and John
and I (and pc if necessary) will be glad to comment on others' attempts
at using these.  (One hint - pc uses "he kept on beating the dog too
long" as an example of "za'o).  You can also pile these on ad nauseum:
"he kept on kept on beating the dog too long too long" is barely
parsable in English, but is "za'oza'o" tense in Lojban.

John C.:  please take note of the following examples, possibly for use
in the tense paper.


>        le  mo'u    zdani cu po'ayfa'u      (spoja   farlu)
>        the expired house    fell to pieces (explode fall)
>            (from mulno; natural end of process)

the completitive of a house is when it naturally decays out of being a
house to become something no-longer-a-house (ba'o zdani)

If the house were razed before it's natural lifetime, that point of
falling to pieces would NOT be "mo'u zdani", but rather "co'u zdani"
(co'u can also apply to the mo'u point).  If someone were to continue
living in the house after it had decayed to the point where it would no
longer be considered a house, say an inhabitant of a condemned
structure, that person is inhabiting "lo za'o zdani"


>        ko'a zbacfa         le  co'a zdani (zbasu    cfari)
>        they began building the new  house (assemble initiate)
>                                (from krasi; start of process)

This says they initiated the start of it being a house.  I think it
isn't a house until the building is mostly done, so would use "pu'o"
"They began building the about-to-be-a-house." "co'a" might apply
to the christening or moving-in.

You could use "co'a" for a different tense though, omitting the cfari:

ko'a co'a zbasu le [pu'o] zdani
They are at the initiation of building the [soon-to-be] house.


>
>        le  zdani be bamo'u             le nu ke'a  se zbasu
>        the house after (completion of)       (its) assembly

grammatical (I think), but doesn't do what you want - "ba" here is an
offset from the reference, which then serves as an anchor for the event:
"the thing described as a house later (than now) at the point of
completion of its assembly"

le zdani poi ke'a ba'o se zbasu
the house such that it is in the aftermath of being-made

>
>        le  zdani be ba le nu ke'a  mo'u     se zbasu
>        the house after       (its) complete assembly

seems more or less correct, if clumsy

le zdani poi [ke'a] ba'o se zbasu

is more to the point.

Note that use of one of these tenses in effect substitutes for an
implicit "nu" clause around the predicate it is inflecting.

>In both cases, I'm not sure if ke'a has an officially defined
>antecedent; I suppose one could use "ri" since no other sumti
>intervenes.  In the -gua!spi equivalents (which are subordinate
>clauses), "le zdani" would be replicated here automatically.

If you use "be", then "ke'a" is not defined.  If you use "pe" or "poi"
to make a relative phrase/clause, "ke'a" refers to the sumti you are
predicating/identifying with that structure.  It is conceivable that
"ke'axino" (x-sub-0) could be defined in the way you've used it, but not
bare "ke'a" - the problem with which can be seen if you take either of
your last two structures, which are sumti, and put them inside a
relative clause.  The "ke'a" then would have to refer to something
outside the clause, not the 'head' of the current description.

I expect that this is enough to confuse most people for one message.
Suffice it to say that Lojban can handle most any time and space
complication you can describe (pc has issued this as a challenge)
within its tense system, and probably can do so more briefly and
clearly than in English (my addendum, not pc's).
----
lojbab = Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
         2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA
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