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

On Thu, 18 August 2005, 17:29 (+0100), Jim Henry wrote:

 > On 8/18/05, Carsten Becker wrote:
 >
 >> One question: why do you make it so complicated? If they
 >> can
 >> travel in time, our current grammatical concept of past,
 >> present and future would be of no use anymore. Only an
 >> absolute system (i.e. the date of a point in time) would
 >> be
 >> sensible then AFAICT.
 >
 > A speaker might want to indicate not just whether
 > something
 > has already happened or is yet to happen in absolute time,
 > but also in subjective time, at least in circumstances
 > where the two don't coincide.  Similarly, he might want
 > to ask the listener whether something has already
 > happened for them.

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. I hope that
also
answers the mail you wrote me off-listly, Tom? Sorry for my
harsh words, they weren't meant to be so. I read that mail
of
yours and I understood your points.

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@listserv.brown.edu)

Carsten

--
"Miranayam cepauarà naranoaris."
(Calvin nay Hobbes)

Edatamanon le matahanarà sitayea eityabo ena Bahis Siruena,
15-A8-58-7-5-5-19 ena Curan Tertanyan.

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