Hi, Remi. Thanks for participating and contributing.
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Remi Villatel <maxilys@T...> wrote:
> Tom Chappell wrote:
>
> > A society of time-travelers who meet at a particular time may
need to specify "past" or "future" in three different time-scales:
> > Speaker's past vs Speaker's future;
> > Addressee's past vs Addressee's future;
> > Subject's past vs Subject's future ("Subject" = subject of
sentence.).
> >
> > That leads to 11 tenses, since the Speaker's Present and
> > the Addressee's Present will be the same moment, and we can
assume
> > that the Subject's Present takes place in the Speaker's and
> > Addressee's Present.
> >
> > (The Subect's Past or Future could overlap the
> > Speaker's and Addressee's Present, however.).
>
> The solution is obvious,
Well, it may be obvious /now/;
it wasn't obvious to /me/, until I read the rest of your post.
> it's already contained in your question when
> you write "speaker's past" or "speaker's future", etc.
>
> From a time-traveler's point of view, the absolute time doesn't
exist.
> The only time that makes sense for him is a tense relative to his
> internal clock.
>
> Whatever the absolute time I'm traveling into, I'm always in my
present.
>
> Logically, the same applies to each tiny bit of the reality
although not
> all "bits" are conscious of it.
>
> So, instead of the verb, the tense marking must be set on the
objects
> and the subject.
Now, /that/ ... is a cool idea!
It might, indeed, be what I'm looking for.
>
> present-I be not hungry, past-I eat this absolute.future night.
A paraphrase of "I'm not hungry, I already ate later this afternoon"?
>
> Absolute future or common future, i.e. common to the speaker and
the
> addressee.
>
> past-I bring this (present) object from the absolute future.
Sounds, and looks, good, so far.
>
> If you kill your past parents before your past conception, absolute-
you
> cease to exist.
>
> present-He is on an absolute.past mission that may affect the
absolute
> present.
OK, this is a tough one for me.
What is "present-He"?
If "He"'s not here now while we're having this conversation,
how do I know I need the "present-" marking on the "-He"?
Especially, if "He"'s already in the absolute.past on his mission,
why wouldn't I use "past-He"?
As for the "may affect the absolute.present",
is that in my.future and/or your.future and/or his.future?
Reading below, I see that "may affect" is
in the mission's future and in the absolute.present's future.
How does one say so?
>
> So each tense marking is relative to the internal clock of the
object or
> subject to which it applies. An absolute tense is the time the
speaker
> and the adressee share. (If they look at the same clock, both can
agree
> on a meaning for the words "earlier" or "later".)
>
> However I don't know what to do with erased time i.e. events as
they
> were before a careless time-traveler changed them into something
else.
The sentence of yours I had trouble with (just above), is in this
sort of territory (although your sentence doesn't clearly blame the
time-emissary's foolishness, as opposed to his mission).
> It gets very close from the alternate realities issue. And things
are
> already messy enough with only one timeline and time-travelers who
makes
> knots with it. Several alternatives timelines will only multiply
the
> number of possible knots.
That's why I included "mood and modality for track-jumpers",
or whatever I called it, as well as "tense for time-travelers".
Obviously a historical event which is no longer history is a very
special kind of irrealis (irrealis that used to be realis?).
> I prefer not to think about the kind of
> knitting we'd get as our "reality".
Since we're not quantum-physicists, fortunately we don't have to
think about this kind of thing happening in "real life", and then
worry about getting it right and proving it to all the other quantum-
physicists.
As amateur conlangers, however, we can, if we want to, just for fun,
come up with ways to talk about it. They don't have to be provably
right, just plausibly worth trying out.
>
> --
> ==================
> Remi Villatel
> maxilys_@_tele2.fr
> ==================
Thanks.
Tom H.C. in MI