Re: [engelang] Xorban experimental tense markers - engelang messages

If tenses are predicates of some sort, what do they range over and how is that fitted into the rest of the language? If your language talks explicitly about worlds, then, of course, tenses could be predicates over certain sets of worlds. But then every sentence involves placing the event described in some world or other (probably dropped in obvious cases, of course). Since shifting from world to world in this way creates a sort of intensional context, this throws most of language into an intensional mold (Montague would not find this undesirable, of course). On the whole, it seems easier to just take them as undefined operators (there may be matching predicates of course, since we allow events as objects) and deal with the problems witout the extra difficulties of worlds (same applies to alethic modalities).

From: And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email>
To: engelang@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2012 10:16 AM
Subject: Re: [engelang] Xorban experimental tense markers

Can you re-say that, at greater length and with more clarity?

On Sep 28, 2012 3:31 PM, "John E Clifford" <kali9putra@hidden.email> wrote:

Well, they look that way, but I shouldn't think that that is the way they would be in a language -- unless you want all the world stuff to be overt, which seems strange in the object language.

From: And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email>
To: engelang@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2012 3:38 AM
Subject: Re: [engelang] Xorban experimental tense markers

Obviously these are predicates getting given unary operator form for abbreviatory purposes. My first thought is there's no reason to privilege tense in this way. Better to have a more generalized system for creating operators from predicates. Or else have no operators.

,, And.

On Sep 28, 2012 12:45 AM, "Mike S." <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't think that we know what tense markers are ultimately going to look like, which ones we'll have, or how they'll fit in with worlds and situations, but for experimental purposes I would like to designate "hik-" for tense markers and create seven to start with. All of these are relative to "now" meaning "at the time that this sentence (was/started) being uttered/written".

hika: currently, now, "it is now the case that F"

hiki: in the past, before now, "it was the case that F"

hiku: in the future, after now, "it will be the case that F"

hiki'e: in the near past, "F just happened"

hiki'o: in the far past, "F happened a while back"

hiku'e: in the near future, "F is about to happen"

hiku'o: in the far future, "F will happen eventually"

Thoughts? Sound good for now?

--
co ma'a mke

Xorban blog: Xorban.wordpress.com
My LL blog: Loglang.wordpress.com