Re: "To be" or not "to be"? (was Re: TRANS: something slightly more deep)

[slightly reformatted]
On 7 Feb 00, at 23:10, Dan Sulani wrote:

> On 7 Feb, Paul Bennett wrote:
>
>> Phew!  I keep being surprised by rtemmu!  I hope I haven't misunderstood
>> it *too* horrendously in the following suggestion.  I've gone to the
>> archive and read your intro to rtemmu, so I hope I'm on track.
>
> Thank you for your suggestions. Comments are always welcome.
> I also went back again and reread my intro so that we
> will both be on the same track
> (hopefully going in the same direction! :-)  )
It is clear from what follows that I should have read more than just that one
introduction... :-)  I (hope I) have rectified that now, and have looked at a
few more examples.

>> Possibly, g~am needs some "sister" morphemes (also bound prefixes?), to
>> function as markers of how soon a change in the rate of change (ie an
>> "acceleration" or "decceleration") is expected.
> It seems to me that here you are talking about two different things:
> 1. nearness/remoteness in time
> 2. acceleration/deceleration of rate of change
The second meaning was closer to my intent; read on...

[snip a description of rtemmu tenses]

> Regarding your second suggestion,  about acceleration/deceleration
> of the process being described (or one's own subjective state),
> I must admit that I hadn't thought of that. But now that you mention it,
> it seems like a really good thing to grammatically mark in rtemmu.
> Thanks for the assist!

I actually had "...zuv g~am..." meaning something more like "It's not
noticably changing at the moment (zuv), and I can't beleive that it ever
has changed nor ever will change (g~am)", i.e. not only do I lack evidence
of its changing significantly, but I also lack belief in the possibility of
significant change.

By itself, I agree, it says very little about the (lack of) existence of
something.  I think I'd mistransed "kehs" in "ikehszuv g~amshye", possibly,
but I spose that's neither here nor there any more...

Ok, let's have a quick rethink:  (still attempting to leave the existing
corpus intact)

g~a-    roughly "a lack of", can be a bound prefix to any word
(a)m-   that which I've previously been calling {g~am}

The parenthesised (a) elides when not word-initial.

How well does this sit with your intuitions about rtemmu?  It seems to be
fairly accepting of consonant clusters, to perhaps the incongrous eliding
(a) above isn't required?

>> {g~am} would then function as the "rate of approach of a change of
>> rate of change is too slow to observe" end of the adrate spectrum.  The
>> opposite end of this spectrum encompasses things changing unexpectedly or
>> unstably?
> Interesting. But, as I see it, no matter how the rate of change
> itself changes, or the rate of the rate of change, etc., you still have
> _something_ changing, no matter how slowly or unexpectedly.
> "g~am" is meant to stand for "nothing", the opposite of existence.
/*
Erm, I thought {g~amshye} was "nothing":
(On Mon 7, Feb you wrote:)
- Essentially, I ignored the philosophy and muscled in a word
- meaning  "none",  g~am  (g~=[N] ). Existence, or "shye" is less
- of a problem, since that is simply what one observes or thinks about.
- But what  indeed would "g~amshye" mean in a rtemmu framework?
- I still don't really know.
*/

> (Could one put an acceleration marker on _that_?
> Accelerated nonexistence? Accelerating towards what-when? _How_?
> Shades of quantum physics! [either that, or the late hour at which I am
> typing this! :-) ] )
Why can't "a lack of something" (with the new definition of {g~am} as "a
lack of" and {shye} as "something") stand for "nothing" in the same way
that "a lack of grapes" might stand for "no grapes"?


>> izuvnu rtem! (or is that too strong a statement?)
>
> I think it would mean "I am catatonic"  :-D
> (But I really am flattered that you tried!)
>
> i = speaker, present tense
> zuv = speaker is objectively changing too slowly
>          to notice (nothing is moving; he's not even breathing)
> nu = the "rtem" is subjectively not changing very much
>          either
> rtem = word
>
> I think it would be better to use "na" (normal subjective change)
> or even "no" (slow subjective change to signify difficulty) for
> the speaker.
> Thus,  "inanu rtem" might mean "I am concentrating on the
> idea of 'word'  and it's not leading to any conclusions"
> Or, perhaps, "I am meditating on a word" (Maybe
> that would be better expressed by "inono rtem" ?)
> If you meant to say "I am speaking", I think I'd say it more like
>
> "inakehs rtemmu"
>
> na= normal subjective change in the speaker
> kehs = normal observable change in the language
>              (in the sense that phonemes, morphemes,etc.
>               are heard or seen to come and go as the
>                sentence progresses)
> rtem = word
> -mu =dynamic system   (rtemmu = language)
>
I meant something more translatable to english as "I'm always/constantly
thinking about language", with overtones of "... and I can't help it".  The
word The suffix {-mu} got completely discarded, for reasons that are hard
to fathom.

In using "izuv...", I was influenced mainly by the phrase "izuvzuv fam =
the heat I am feeling" in your first post.

I'm slightly confused by the various rates of change.  For example, what's
the difference between:

zuv - changing too slowly to be noticed, and
nu - no noticeable rate of change

To me they both imply "(apparently) not changing".

Any chance of a nice lengthy posting on the various rate of change markers,
and their various idiosyncracies? <G>



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Pb