Re: tense conversions

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

The basic philosophy behind Lojban tense is to cover all manner of things
expressible as relate to time and space, and a minimum of other possibilities.

However, the underlying design of Lojban is that tense expression is optional,
and often may be omitted - indeed is usually omitted.

>I don't believe the connection you make is necessarily true.  Will a list
>of English-to-Lojban tense conversions really cause people to use tenses
>incorrectly?  If that list is thoughtfully made, then I doubt it.

The fear I have whenever you have a list of 1-to-1 correspondences between
colloquial English and Lojban is that the two items are identical in meaning
and semantics.  That IS what Lojban learners have done in the past more often
than not.  The vast majority of people who use the gismu list will rely
on the English keyword as a total meaning of the Lojban word in their
first effort.  But this is incorrect, pure and simple.

Most of the Lojban tenses  do NOT have a simple and single equivalent in
English.  for example, English has no pure perfective tense, and thus
none of the ZAhO words have a universal formulation in English.  Indeed,
i suspect that your equivalences, which iI think were defined in terms of
"come" will not work for many, if not most English verbs - because some of
the tenses are expressed different ways with different verbs, some are
inexpressible as all.

> In
>creating such a list, the intent should be to use Lojban's clarity to
>define the true meaning of English's idiomatic tense expressions (which,
>by contrast, are not very clear).

This is certainly valuable as  a description of English, but NOT as a
description of Lojban.  And per the above, it is of restricted value in English
because it does not operate universally.

>> Your suggested new
>> "tenses" are an excelllent example of the problem of looking for word for
>> word structure for structure mappings.  These are simply things that are
>> not conveyed in Lojban tenses as they are in English tenses.
>
>I can see your point, here, but just because Lojban tenses don't have a
>general way of conveying intent or affirmation, does that mean they should
>not?  There are already at least two event contours which convey specific
>sorts of intent; these are de'a or "pausitive" which conveys the intent to
>resume, and pu'o or "inchoative" which can convey the intent to initiate.

The pausitive is NOT merely an "intent".  It says that the event in question
has stopped and WILL continue.  Likewise the inchoative is defined in terms
of anticipation of an event, but the presumption and claim is that the event
DOES take place.  Thus "pu'o morsi" refers to the time immediately prior
to death and in anticipation of that death.  If the guy merely intends to
commit suicide, but does not go through with it, then his  actions were NOT
"pu'o morsi".

>Ultimately, the choice of whether intent or affirmation will be conveyed
>by tense, by adjectives, by prepositions, etc. is a matter of
>aesthetics.

In Lojban it is a matter of design.  The attitude of the speaker is expressed
specifically through attitudinals in UI.
.ai expresses the straightforward attitude of intent, though others may be
taken to imply intent (given opportunity).
Possibilities include .ei, .a'i, ba'a, .a'o, and no doubt others.
Affirmation can be expressed using .ia or ju'o, possibly .ie, and again there
are other possibilities.  Lojban is VERY rich in attitudinal expression,
and the intent is that therefre attitudinals are omitted elsewhere in the
language design.  Of course, "intent" mayy be something deduced by the
logic of the real world circumstances.

>Alternately, completely different tenses could be formed; as
>long as the student is aware that these are suggested tense conversions
>are simply options and not dogma, there should be no problem.

Alas, too many students of language consider that anything written in a
textbook IS dogma.  We have to be very careful not to impose prescriptive
usages where they are not intended, or the language prescription gets out
of hand.

>... and most of those have no simple English equivalent.  The list you
>advocate would be enormous!

It would be infinite, of course.

>And, I think, not particularly helpful to
>anyone.

That depends on how the list is edited down.  The reason for suggesting that
approach is that you will more clearly find multiple Lojban equivalents for
the English wher they exist.  And giving 2 Lojban equivalents for an
English usage, and describing the difference bettween them tells an English
speaker FAR more about both Lojban and English tense usage than the bare-bones
equivalence list, which tells them nothing about English unless they already
understand the Lojban.

>the current approach which I've seen in the various
>introductory papers and lessons, which is to ignore tense because it is
>(initially) too complex.

No.  The approach is to ignore tense because it is usually ellipsized and
is not specified.

Actual tense usage in Lojban seems to be evolving.  Now that people understand
the ZAhO tenses better, they are being used more and more, and may be
even displacing the simple aorist tenses as the norm when tense IS to be
expressed.  When I wrote the first draft of the textbook, the ZAhO tenses did
not even exist, and 3 years ago were almost never used except for special
cases.

We've had a lot of debate about the prescriptive effects of textbooks.
People have argued from day 1 that we should put "real" conversation
snippets in the book so people can see how to, say, write a letter in Lojban.
But that requires some conventions as to opening and closing, etc., that simply
do not exist in any consensus. We thus tend to minimize conversational
examples as being too prescripotive.

> In fact, nearly every example in these materials
>is incorrect because they assume a tense (usually present) that isn't
>actually there, and that is going to be very misleading in the long run...
>the student will have to unlearn the habit of forming tenseless bridi with
>the expectation that they are using the present tense.

Because we who wrote the textbook are native English speakers, when we wrote
examples, we did so from our English biases.  there simply was not enough
usage of "tenseless" expression other than in the present tense, because thus
far  there is almost know usage at all outside the present tense.  I am no
particular expert in devising optimal expamples.

And NO the examples are NOT incorrect.  They assume a tense that is not there,
but one which is implied by the context, which is the way it is supposed to
work.  In a different context, the tenseless sentence would mean a different
tense was implied.  Tenseless does NOT necessarily mean without any tense.

lojbab