Re: survey: time and space

Garrett Jones scripsit:

> - all languages have a way to question about time (when) and about space
> (where). what about one that asks about both time & space (when & where)? if
> one person says "i'm having a party", the other person could say
> "when.and.where?" with a single word. related lexical items could be useful
> when talking about relativity.
In Lojban, the question word "cu'e" [SuhE] invites the user to add ancillary
information, which is most often time and space, but can in principle be
almost anything not normally expressed: "under what circumstances? by
what standard? within what context? with what instrument?" etc. etc.
It is also possible to ask specific questions using the word for "what",
thus "when?" specifically is "simultaneous-with what?" and "where?" is
"co-located with what?"

> - in english, for greater and lesser amounts of time, we use 'long' and
> 'short'. these are the same terms that are used for length. do any languages
> use physical dimensions for time besides length? such as height, "for a tall
> time vs for a short time", or width, "for a wide time vs for a narrow time".
> Or, does anyone use unique words pertaining only to the time dimension?
> (this is what i intend to do in my language Minyeva).
Lojban doesn't quite do that.  But it adapts its aspect words to represent
*spatial* aspects as well: more or less as if we said "He is standing until
the wall" and "He is standing after the wall" to mean "this side of the wall"
and "beyond the wall" respectively.

--
John Cowan                              <jcowan@...>
http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              http://www.reutershealth.com
Unified Gaelic in Cyrillic script!
        http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Celticonlang