Re: THEORY: Tenses for Time Travelers; Plus, Moods and Modalities for Alternate Realities

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Carsten Becker <naranoieati@B...>
wrote:
> [snip]
>
> Just like some others, when I saw this thread again this
> morning when I read my mails, I thought of the "inner clock"
> as well. IMO, either (1) you only have absolute time or, the
> other way round, (2) you mark verbs for your subjective
> time.
> Or you make (3) your time marking depend on the time in
> which you're at the moment:
>
> (I, a time traveller with his "home time" in 2005, travels
> to the past and to the future:)
>
> 1) I say in the past:   I am born on August 26, 1986 AD
>    I say in the future: I am born on August 26, 1986 AD
>
> 2) past:   I was born on August 26, 1986 AD
>    future: I was born on August 26, 1986 AD
>
> 3) past:   I will be born on August 26, 1986 AD
>    future: I was     born on August 26, 1986 AD
>
> That way no additional tenses are necessary.
Good reasoning.  Good system.

Still, they say, "the differences between languages aren't about what
you /can/ say, they're about what you /have/ to say."

Why not a conlang where you /have/ to be clear about when, exactly,
each mentioned-event is supposed to have occured?

It needn't even involve time-travel, nor FTL travel; just being able
to routinely travel an appreciable fraction of the speed-of-light-in-
a-vacuum (e.g. 90% c, though ISTR 50% c would be fast enough) could
cause you to need to be careful in order to be precise.

Some languages require you to say, whenever you mention an/some
object/s, whether you are talking about just one or more than one;
others don't.  Some languages require you to say, whenever you
mention an event, whether it's happening now, has already happened,
or is going to happen; others don't.  Some languages require you to
say, whenever you say something, how you know it; others don't.

For example, American languages are famous for not requiring tenses
but for requiring evidentials.  Many American languages do not
require number.  Sino-Tibetan languages are famous for requiring
neither number nor tense.

It is a common feature of natural language that nearly every natlang
requires something that isn't necessary.

You could say this is a "Universal".

> I hope that also answers the mail you wrote me off-listly, Tom?
If it was /my/ off-list mail, rather than Jim's, to which you refer,
then, Yes, this does answer it; and quite satisfactorily, too.
As you can see, I've answered the answers.

> Sorry for my harsh words, they weren't meant to be so.
Oh, I didn't find them harsh, but thanks for the apology;
apologies usually aren't necessary, but I appreciate the attitude that
"it's better to give one that's not needed
than not to give one that is needed."

I didn't write off-list to avoid putting an emotional topic on-list;
I just didn't want to crowd out the 100-post limit (or my personal 5-
post limit) with something that might be of interest to only a
minority of the other people who participated in this thread.

> I read that mail of yours and I understood your points.
I appreciate your taking the time to do so.
I can tell you understood my points.
I think I understood the points you made in your post, too;
and I think they are correct.

> BTW, you might want to search the archives for "vector
> tense". I haven't checked out what this thread is about, but
> it caught my eye when I extracted the logfiles from 1998 and
> 1999 yesterday (you can get them if you send GET CONLANG
> LOGyymmw [e.g. LOG0508B = August 2005, week 2] to
> listserv@l...)
That sounds /very/ /interesting/.  I will do that.  Thanks.

Tom H.C. in MI