Bunches
On 12/2/05, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> We can, to be sure,
> do allsorts of things with languages that don't
> deal with things that way — process philosophy
> in English, a static metaphysical language, for
> example )Buddhism in Sanskrit is even worse)-- so
> the fact that we can talk about time as a
> continuum or as series doesn't tell us what it is
> in the language.
That assumes that there is something that it is
in the language. I see no evidence for this underlying
picture of time that Lojban is supposed to support, but
maybe I haven't looked in the right places.
mokca
> Well, that seems to be a spatial term extended by
> analogy to time, once we get the idea that there
> is an analogy to use. It does not jibe with
> {temci}, which is the authoritative word aon
> time, I suppose.
I don't see any reason to suppose {temci} to be more
authoritative than {mokca}. Is it because it uses "time"
as its keyword?
In any case, I don't see that either {temci} or {mokca} would
favour a continuous or discrete view of time, since both are
compatible with both. In a continuous timeline, there is no
problem in having continuous intevals between intervals, or
in having points within the intervals. In a discrete view, there
is no problem in the constituents being points and the intervals
between two other intervals consisting of a finite number of
points. I wouldn't even hesitate a mokca in using mokca for
a quantum of time with some very brief finite duration despite
the double insistence in the definition for 0-dimension.
If the language had some underlying preference for one of the
views, I would look for it in the closed class of structure words,
not in the open class of brivla. It is trivial to introduce brivla
with meanings such as "x1 is a discrete quantum of time"
or "x1 is a continuous stretch of time", or whatever one prefers,
and the language is practically left untouched by having those
words.
Now, if we examine the tense words (I suppose that's the most
obvious place to look for a bias in the language with respect to
this) I can't find a single one of them that would favour one view
or the other.
ca, pu, ba only address the ordering of events, but both discrete
and continuous intervals can be ordered.
zi, za, zu, ze'i, ze'a, ze'u give lengths of intervals. I have an easier
time in thinking of lengths as continuous, but again they can be
thought of as a relatively small/large number of discrete constituents
too, so this is not decisive.
ru'i, di'i, ta'e say how an event covers an interval, but the interval
again can be thought of as a continuous stretch or as a chain of
little chunks. Similarly for <number> roi.
So, if there is an underlying view favoured by the language, where
or how is it expressed?
mu'o mi'e xorxes