Re: Locating a Sentence's Action in Time Rob Zook Sun, 04 Oct 1998 03:27:26 -0500 At 10:26 PM 10/1/98 -0500, Saul Epstein wrote: >The second part is a set of infixes that locate the action more >precisely with relation to the moment indicated by the tense. These >are inserted directly into the word naming the action itself, after >the first vowel. I find my self a little confused about the choices. I suppose since all of these appear in the ZC. I also wonder if that means you don't want to adopt any of the remaining additions I proposed or if you just got tired of waiting for me to bring it up again? :) Some of these descriptions do not seem to match up to the ZC descriptions. > -zo- incomplete (initial) > action begins before tense-moment and ends just > before tense-moment, just as tense-moment begins, > or early during tense-moment -zo- appears in the ZC as "Action in past still going on". Which means that the end point is not really determinate, although I think we might assume that it finishes sometime during the tense moment, although I'm not sure how safe an assumption that is. > -pe- complete > action begins and ends within tense-moment This does not seem to be the same as the ZC either: "Action in past finished (terminated)". This almost seems like a plain past tense except it refers to the action as an event or process, i,e. with a end point (and presumedly a beginning). So I took this to mean that the tense moment occurs after the end point of the action. > -cu- continuous > action begins before tense-moment and ends after > tense-moment ZC has "Action/State to be contintued", which seems just about the same thing as you said. > -xe- incomplete (final) > action begins late during tense-moment, just as > tense-moment ends, or just after tense-moment, > and ends after tense-moment ZC has "Action/State to be terminated". This seems to me that the tense moment occurs within the action itself. The action is still going on but approaching an known endpoint. > -mu- indeterminate > action coincides with tense-moment, but beginning > and ending are uncertain ZC has "Continuous present" which seems very close to the way you described it. I still think we can best organize these in two parts, -zo- belonging to a class of particals which refer to the position of the tense moment in relation to the period of time, or interval during which the action takes place. The rest belong together and seem to describe the position of the tense moment in relation to the interval during which the action takes place, when considered as a process or event with general stages. All of these I think refer to the "aspect" of the sentance? How about we call the two sets of particals Interval Aspects and the Event Aspects? Although an action obviously seems like a process, I see no reason why we cannot look at entities as processes as well, so while interval aspects, so I think event aspects could apply to both. Normally when we speak of an action and an object in a sentance those both get treated temporally as a single instance in time complete unto itself. If we were to graph them, as a set of single dots on the time line. However that can abstract things too generally to be useful in some contexts, and we need our words to more closely match the observered world where an action consists of a process, or an event. An event which has a beginning, a middle and an end. An action consists of an event which has a measurable duration. We can treat it as a point or dot in time when the duration has no meaning for us, but sometimes we need to talk about the duration, or interval of time during which the action takes place or the object exists. So we can have Interval Aspects like these: -zo- before and during (imperfect - initial) -khe?- before, during and after (inclusive progressive) -dza?- during and after (imperfect - final) -cu- during (perfect)* -du?- before and after, but not during (exclusive progressive) Each of which we can view on a time line like so (where -1 means the infinite/indefinite past, 0 the Tense Moment and 1 the infinite/ indefinite future): TM -1--------0--------1 imperfect - initial ?<----0>? inclusive progressive ?<----0---->? imperfect - final ?<0---->? perfect <0> exclusive progressive ?<--->0<--->? So each of these interval aspects refer to the duration, beginning middle and end of an action, in relation to the tense moment. Sometimes we need to look at a little finer resolution on our action or entities interval of time. We may need to point out relative positions within this interval of time as if it were a process with definite stages from start to end. Event Aspects could look like this: -ba?- pre-initiation - just before expected start of an event -shi?- initiation - the beginning of an event -no?- post-initiation - just after expected start of an event -cu- duration - an interval within the event -mu- continuative - any instantaneous point within an event -vja?- suspension - pause during the event -gjo?- resumption - resumption of the event after a pause -xe- pre-completion - just prior to the completion of an event -pe- completion - the end of an event. -di?- post-completion - just after the completion of an event The question marks indicate particals which I suggest we use for the aspect in question. Particals without the question marks are the ones which Saul mentioned and which appear in the ZC. So we can have a simple tense which describes an observable situation only in the most general way with regard to time: Surak lihe owkja (literally) "Surak in past he exist" (gloss) "Surak existed" The duration of the process of Surak existin occured wholey before now. Let's look at the situation were I write an invitation to some one, I could just say: th'k'tvehi vdik'wawjehi "I write the invitation" or: lihe th'k'tvehi vdik'wawjehi "I wrote the invitation" Now lets allow that act of writing some duration. What if I say that sentance after I begin writing the invitation but before the process of writing has ended: lihe th'k'tvezohi vdik'wawjehi "I wrote the invitation (and am still writing it)" That example shows how an interval aspect could apply to an action, harkening back to the sentance on Surak let us see how we could apply an event aspect to the object of the sentance and how it changes the meaning of the object. We could make this more complex by saying giving some entity with a known temporal location as a reference point in time to show when Surak existed: Surak lihe owkja 'Ankh'khehe "Surak in past he exist before, during and after the time of the past WAR" (gloss) "Surak existed around the time of the past WAR" The temporal aspect changes the object from a plain old entity to a temporal location. Some more examples, lets say I speak to Spock: th'prala Spokhi "I speak to spock" But when did I speak to Spock? lihe th'prala Spokhi "I spoke to Spock" lihe th'prala Spokhi th'kahscuwanhe "I spoke to Spock during my kahswan" more literally: "in past I speak to Spock located during my kahs'wan" lihe th'prashila Spokhi th'kahscuwanhe "I began my speech to Spock during my kahswan" or more literally: "in past my begin speak to Spock located during my kahs'wan" Hopefully this makes my past post on this a little more clear. Rob Z.