John Woldemar Cowan

“ The Lojban time tenses reflect time as seen by the speaker, who is assumed to be a “point-like observer” in the relativistic sense: they do not say anything about physical relationships of relativistic interval, still less about implicit causality. The nature of tense is not only subjective but also observer-based. ”

“ But Lojbanic events may be much more “spread out” than that: “mi vasxu” (I breathe) is something which is true during the whole of my life from birth to death, and over the entire part of the earth where I spend my life. The cmavo of VEhA (for space) and ZEhA (for time) can be added to any of the tense constructs we have already studied to specify the size of the space or length of the time over which the bridi is claimed to be true.
5.1) le verba ve'i cadzu le bisli The child [small space interval] walks-on the ice. In a small space, the child walks on the ice. ”

“ There is no parallel facility in Lojban at present for expressing movement in time — time travel — but one could be added easily if it ever becomes useful.
Movement in space: MOhI The following cmavo is discussed in this section:
mo'i MOhI movement flag All the information carried by the tense constructs so far presented has been presumed to be static: the bridi is occurring somewhere or other in space and time, more or less remote from the speaker. Suppose the truth of the bridi itself depends on the result of a movement, or represents an action being done while the speaker is moving? ”

“ A long time from or before now, the man will bite or bit the dog. Example 4.5 and Example 4.6 are perfectly legitimate, but may not be very much used: “zi” by itself signals an event that happens at a time close to the present, but without saying whether it is in the past or the future. ”

“ I know about the [present] is-dead of-the-one-called “John”. I know the time of John’s death. I know when John died. Tenses versus modals Grammatically, every use of tenses seen so far is exactly paralleled by some use of modals as explained in Chapter 9. Modals and tenses alike can be followed by sumti, can appear before the selbri, can be used in pure and mixed connections, can participate in JAI conversions. The parallelism is perfect. However, there is a deep difference in the semantics of tense constructs and modal constructs, grounded in historical differences between the two forms. ”

“ Probably the most counterintuitive of the Lojban examples is Example 15.7. The “ca” looks quite odd, as if George were going to the market right now, rather than back when John spoke. But this “ca” is really a “ca” with respect to a reference point specified by the outer “pu”. This behavior is the same as the additive behavior of multiple tenses in the same bridi, as explained in Section 13.
There is a special cmavo “nau” (of selma'o CUhE) which can be used to override these rules and get to the speaker’s current reference point. (Yes, it sounds like English “now”.) ”

“ I [future] go-to the market. The man bites the dog. What is the implied tense of the second sentence? Not “puba”, but only “pu”, since only “pu” was made sticky with “ki”. So the translation is:
I was going to go to the market. The man bit the dog. Lojban has several ways of embedding a bridi within another bridi: descriptions, abstractors, relative clauses. (Technically, descriptions contain selbri rather than bridi.) Any of the selbri of these subordinate bridi may have tenses attached. ”

“ All ducks swim by floating. is a Lojban truth, even though the colloquial English translation is false or at best ambiguous. This is because the tenseless Lojban bridi doesn’t necessarily claim that every duck is swimming or floating now or even at a specific time or place. ”

“ Above a place to the left of me, the man bites the dog. In ordinary space, the result of going up and then to the left is the same as that of going left and then up, but such a simple relationship does not apply in all environments or to all directions: going south, then east, then north may return one to the starting point, if that point is the North Pole. ”

“ Left of a place above me, the man bites the dog. (Perhaps the speaker is at the bottom of a manhole, and the dog-biting is going on at the edge of the street.)
In the English translation, the keywords “left” and “above” occur in reverse order to the Lojban order. This effect is typical of what happens when we “unfold” Lojban compound tenses into their English equivalents, and shows why it is not very useful to try to memorize a list of Lojban tense constructs and their colloquial English equivalents. ”

“ Lojban specifies the spatial tense of a bridi (the place at which it occurs) by using words from selma'o FAhA and VA to describe an imaginary journey from the speaker to the place referred to. FAhA cmavo specify the direction taken in the journey, whereas VA cmavo specify the distance gone. For example:
2.1) le nanmu va batci le gerku The man [medium distance] bites the dog. Over there the man is biting the dog. What is at a medium distance? The event referred to by the bridi: the man biting the dog. What is this event at a medium distance from? The speaker’s location. ”

“ It is false that I am dead during my life. It is also possible to perform scalar negation of whole tense constructs by placing a member of NAhE before them. Unlike contradictory negation, scalar negation asserts a truth: that the bridi is true with some tense other than that specified. ”

“ All ducks are innately capable of swimming. Under some epistemologies, innate capability can be extended in order to apply the innate properties of a mass to which certain individuals belong to the individuals themselves, even if those individuals are themselves not capable of fulfilling the claim of the bridi. ”

“ I am now saying this sentence. means that for an interval starting a short time in the past and extending to a short time in the future, I am expressing the utterance which is Example 5.4. Of course, “short” is relative, as always in tenses. Even a long sentence takes up only a short part of a whole day; in a geological context, the era of Homo sapiens would only be a “ze'i” interval. ”

“ Tenses as sumti tcita So far, we have seen tenses only just before the selbri, or (equivalently in meaning) floating about the bridi with “ku”. There is another major use for tenses in Lojban: as sumti tcita, or argument tags. A tense may be used to add spatial or temporal information to a bridi as, in effect, an additional place:
12.1) mi klama le zarci ca le nu do klama le zdani I go-to the market [present] the event-of you go-to the house. I go to the market when you go to the house. Here “ca” does not appear before the selbri, nor with “ku” ”

“ In foreign languages, you are seldom taught the entire system until you have reached an advanced level. Lojban tenses are extremely systematic and productive, allowing you to express subtleties based on what they mean rather than on how they act similarly to English tenses. ”

“ Shortly earlier than some time later than now, the man will bite the dog. Soon before then, the man will have bitten the dog. The man will have just bitten the dog. The man will just have been biting the dog. ”

“ The logical connective system makes Examples 17.7 through 17.9 equivalent in meaning:
17.7) mi bevri le dakli .ije tu'e mi bevri le gerku .ija mi bevri le mlatu tu'u I carry the sack. And (I carry the dog. And/or I carry the cat) . I carry the sack. And I carry the dog, or I carry the cat, or I carry both. 17.8) mi bevri le dakli gi'eke bevri le gerku gi'a bevri le mlatu I carry the sack and (carry the dog and/or carry the cat) . I carry the sack, and also carry the dog or carry the cat or carry both. ”