Re: from the paper archives - pc on abstractors and tense

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

> > My criticism of {mue}/{puo}/{zahi}/{zuo} is only that the traditional
> > system of 4 situation types has been cast in stone by privileging
> > them with their own cmavo. The system is certainly useful descriptively,
> > but it is underlain by a different, simpler and more revealing system
> > - or so I think and so others think, even if people differ on the details
> > of their preferred analysis.
> Enlighten us, {doi febvi logji prenu}.  What is this underlying system?

States are nondynamic, the others are dynamic. Dynamic situations require
continued energy input for them to continue; otherwise they tend to
cease. Nondynamic situations require energy input to halt them; otherwise
they tend to continue.

Activities (and states) are atelic; accomplishments and achievements are
telic. Telicity means having intrinsic boundaries rather than extrinsically
imposed boundaries. The semantics of boundaries is not confined to
situations.

Achievements lack duration, while all the other types have duration,
but I think this is less fundamental, in that it is possible to specify
in quite some detail what the situation must involve for it to
lack duration (viz. it must involve a punctual entity crossing a frontier).

This is the "system" according to me. In the literature in general, the
main distinctions made are state vs event (and stage-level vs individual-
level) and telic vs atelic.

Note that I do not wish to impose any of this on Lojban.

---
And