Re: future past

On 13 June, Sally Caves wrote:


> How do people generally picture the future?  I always see it as a dark
path
> stretching north before me, the days, weeks, and months a snaking lane
that
> dips into valleys, goes over hills at the New Year, but is there, waiting
> for me to walk on it, like the Yellow Brick Road.  Its stones are even
> dotted with events that I see dimly.  The Trollish notion of the the
future,
> however, must be one where they are facing the past, with the future at
> their back.  They look behind them, as a child would, peering out of the
> rear window of a car and seeing the accumulation of events receding.  This
> is actually very commonsensical, since the future is only foreseeable in
> one's imagination.  How can I tell that I will really go to the dentist
next
> Tuesday?  It may be written on the pavement there (which is just a fancy
> blown-up image of my calendar), but the Ice Age might have come upon us.
:)
>
> How, then, do I see the past?  It's very strange.  It's to the back of me,
> and I have to turn around.  It becomes a fixity, like snapshots.  It
becomes
> a dream.  There can be no walking back on it.
>
> Are these fairly common images of temporality?  How 'bout the rest of you?
    I'm not so sure that it isn't a peculiarly American,
(or perhaps (Indo-?)European)
view. It ties in with a cultural emphasis on paths/roads and going on them
from point A to point B.
    AFAIK, (American) English is loaded with metaphors of travel to signify
development or progression. Even death is given the metaphor:
to "pass on(ward)", to "pass away".

David Peterson wrote:

> If something happened in the
> past, you simply say it.  That is, you can tell someone what happened,
> and it's no
> more controversial then running your hand through your hair.
> By saying that
> something is *going* to happen though you're making a claim.
    IME, that's not strictly true. I recall that there was some fascinating
psychological research that seems to show that people can't always
agree, uncontroversially, upon something that they have just seen
together. Witnesses in courts of law are making claims --- that's why
they are routinely challenged during cross-examination.
    And let's not even go down the road [travel metaphor again ;-)  ]
of false memories implanted via hypnosis and/or psychological therapy!
    And, of course, there's the "nostalgia effect". Those "good old days",
when cross-checked against documents of the time, let alone one's own
diaries or journals, often prove not to have been as good as remembered.
    And then, there is the "social past". I'm sure that the academics among
us who work with documents and events from the past can testify as to
how much of what society "remembers" (ie  historical past)  is made up
of claims and counter-claims. Not very uncontroversial at all!
    In fact, IMHO, not even the present is uncontroversial! Ever been
in a group of people who are witnessing the same event, but all of whom
claim to be seeing different ( even opposing ) things happening?

    ObConlang:
    "Claiming" is actually very important to the temporal system
of rtemmu, my conlang. Tense is marked as to who is claiming to
be experiencing the time: a speaker, some people,  or everybody.
And then the basic tenses are arranged by "can" or "cannot"
(observe or conceive). Thus there are 6 possible variations

    i = speaker can
    u = speaker cannot
    si = some can
    su = some cannot
    li = all can
    lu = all cannot.

In the present tense, a claim is being made about what can or cannot
be experienced, thought about, or remembered.
    For past, rtemmu uses  "can-cannot", IOW, once one could, now one
cannot:
    iu = speaker's past
    sisu = a group's past
    lilu = everybody's past

Again there is a claim as to whose obsevations/thoughts were stopped.

    For the future, it is reversed: "cannot-can", IOW, now one cannot
observe/conceive it, but (in the future) it can be. Once more, a claim
not a statement of fact.

    ui = speaker's future
    susi = group's future
    luli = everybody's future

These, plus complications and other temporal markers, go into
an "initial particle" which must go before each word denoting
a process (along with those wonderful rate-of-change markers :-)  ).
However, unless there is a change, or an emphasis, most
initial particles, except for the very first in a sentence,
are usually omitted.

    Back to Sally's original question, as to how we view time:
Back in my high-school days I was briefly a Radio Amateur.
Amateurs had an interesting concept of time: since, by law,
all communications had to be logged on to special log-sheets,
the log sheets took on a great significance.
If you wanted to say to someone that you wanted to talk to him
in the future, you'd say something on the order of:
"See you on down the log-sheet!"  A past conversation would
be referred to, IIRC, as "on up the log sheet" or
 "on a previous log-sheet".


Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.

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