Re: Grammar of time travel

In a message dated 2/10/2007 9:05:15 PM Central Standard Time,
veritosproject@GMAIL.COM writes:


> > In many science fictions which feature time travel, the problem of
> > grammar for time travellers are often recognized. (Well, it's often
> > ignored too.) I wonder whether someone included grammar of time travel
> > to their languages?
> >
> > Rough sketch of mine:
> >
> > In normal timeline, time is totally ordered, and therefore,
> > trichotomous. So for any time a and b, exactly one of a<b, a=b, a>b is
> > true, which corresponds to past, present, and future.
> >
> > With multiple timelines, time could be partially ordered, then one of
> > four things happen when comparing two times: less than, equal to,
> > greater than, not comparable. So let's give an "alternate" tense for
> > the last case.
> >
> > When the time forms a lattice, say, in a closed universe, it would be
> > bounded, and has Big Bang and Big Crunch as least and greatest
> > element. When closed timelike curve is not involved, there can be a
> > partial order where any two times can meet and join.
> >
> > Given two timelines, ax<a<bx<b<by<d<dy and a<cx<c<cy<d<dy, two
> > speakers in b and c may communicate via some exotic time-crossing
> > communication device.
> >
> > ax and a, or anything before meet of b and c, are "our past".
> > bx, between meet and speaker's present, is "my past".
> > cx, betwwen meet and listener's present, is "your past".
> > b is "my present", c is "your present".
> > In the same way, by is "my future", cy is "your future".
> > d and dy, or anything after join of b and c, are "our future".
> >
> > This creates 8 distinct tenses, and obviously differentitation of
> > shared timeline and non-shared timeline would be useful. In a simpler
> > system, your past/present/future could be compressed to alternate
> > tense discussed above. This leaves, shared-past, past, present,
> > future, shared-future, alternate.
> >
> > Above system could be implemented by modifying tense markers with
> > pronominal markers, maybe omission defaults to "my", or defaults to
> > subject of current sentence. Or, when timeline marking is very
> > essential, omission of one could default to shared times.
> >
> > --
> > Seo Sanghyeon
>
I'm not sure that anything more than objective vs. subjective is required.
Thus a time traveler's own subjective time may be five years, but in that
subjective time he may have traveled to any number of other times, past or future.
Thus the time in his subjective five years ago might be 1000 years earlier or
later in an objective timeline.
One way would be to model time travel tenses after space travel directions.

Lojban has the capability of tense for time travel, but they aren't developed.

stevo

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