Re: Jorge and Veijo once more on ZAhOs

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@GRACKLE.STOCKBRIDGE.MA.US>]

Jorge Llambias:

    In a way it boils down to something like this: When you look at a
    child, do you see the past or the future? Does an old man
    represent the past or the future?

No, this is misleading, when concerned with ZAhO.  The old man does
not directly represent anything to do with time.  Using {ba'o}, an old
man is the aftermath of middle age.  Past and future tense in the
*usual* English meaning of the word `tense' has little to do with
{ba'o} or {pu'o}---as little as it does with{na'onai} (atypically) or
{zu'a} (left), both of which are Lojban tenses.

Veijo says it well and accurately:

    A PU tense or a PU/ZAhO tcita tells WHERE (or rather WHEN) the
    event is, a ZAhO tense tells rather WHAT KIND (the phase of) the
    event is. The phase is actually the event we are talking about,
    the event located with the PU tense and characterized with the
    ZAhO 'tense'. There isn't anything else to look/go to. There is no
    *future event, no past event, we are talking about the phase
    event.

Let me repeat that again: "There is no future event, no past event,
we are talking about the phase event."

It happens that the universe is such that people can translate between
one way of viewing the universe, that involving phases, and another
way, that involving time travel journeys, and the translations work
well enough.

ni'ota'o
[[new topic; tangential information ("By the way")]]

Does anyone know how translations are made between English and
languages that do not use either event contours or English-style
tenses, but use what in Lojban we call "spatial tenses"?

    Robert J. Chassell               bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu
    Rattlesnake Mountain Road        bob@grackle.stockbridge.ma.us
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (413) 298-4725