Re: Tense on Nouns

I'd actually only mentioned the time travela nd grammar thing in passing and
in that it got me thinking about the other idea. Sorry if I didn't make that
more clear before. They're sorta just disconnected ideas.

Cheers,
B

On 2/17/07, Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 09:42:45 -0700, Brian B <caol.kailash@...>
> wrote:
> >I was reading the discussion on Time Travel and Grammar and came up
> >with an idea that I thought I'd share/bounce off everyone: What if the
> >tense was attached to the noun instead of the verb? So that it'd look
> >something like this:
> >
> >I-(present)-(agent) type-(action) email-(present)-(direct object).
> >
> >And potentially, I guess you could have different tenses for different
> >nouns in the sentence.
> >
> >I-(present)-(agent) see-(action) him-(past)-(direct object).
> >
> >And maybe with the last example, also have a thing denoting on the
> >noun the day it was seen, like him-(past)-(yesterday)-(direct object).
> >
> >I assume this has been done/is done somewhere and would like
> >suggestions for further examples of implementation.
> >
> >Peace and Light,
> >B
> >
> >--
>
> As far as language for time-travellers is concerned, this has been
> discussed on
> this list before, and is even now being discussed on the Zompist BBoard.
>
> What was suggested here before -- sorry I can't remember who suggested it,
> or when -- was that the morphology keep track of past/present/future on
> several timelines simultaneously.
>
> The verb will be marked to show that the clause is about something in the
> present or past or future of the speaker's subjective life-stream, and to
> show
> that it is something in the present or past or future of the addressee's
> subjective life-stream.
>
> The subject (and possibly other noun phrases that are direct core
> arguments
> or terms) will be marked to show that the clause is about something in the
> present or past or future of the subject's subjective life-stream.  If all
> of the
> noun-phrases are "tensed" in this way, the language can be very precise
> about when each participant experiences/has experienced/will experience
> the
> event in question, without piling up "tenses" on the verb.
>
> ------
>
> In ZBB it has been pointed out that this basically means the major
> division in
> noun-classes (or "genders") is between things that are capable of
> time-travel
> and things that are not.  (For the careful, we mean things that can travel
> at a
> non-default rate or in a non-default direction, versus things that can
> travel
> only at the default rate and in the default direction).
>
>

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