Re: Query: "tense trickery"

Joe Fineman (or somebody else of the same name) wrote thusly in message
<u3b0ep6dc.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxx>:

I have seen & heard the phrase "tense trickery" off & on over the
years. It gets about four Google hits, which suggest that, if it has
a fixed meaning, most people are not sure of it. Where does it come
from?

I know what I would *like* it to mean: the exploitation of the fact
that verbs in IE languages have obligatory tenses, to lend
plausibility to bad philosophy -- e.g.:

"'Who controls the present controls the past,'" said
O'Brien.... "Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real
existence?"
..."You are no metaphysician, Winston," he said. "Until this
moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I
will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in
space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid
objects, where the past is still happening?"
"No."
"Then where does the past exist, if at all?"
"In records. It is written down."
"In the mind. In human memories."
"In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all
records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past,
do we not?"

Imagine translating that into a dialect -- call it Tinglish -- that
was like English except that verbs had no tenses, so that, e.g., "is"
meant what we would mean by "is and/or was and/or will be", and
relation to the time of utterance (if relevant & inobvious) had to be
expressed with the help of adverbs. O'Brien would have his work cut
out deciding where to put the adverbs.

My fantasy language Hallon - www.geocities.com/paulvstownsend/hallon - has
no tenses or other inflections, and I'm up to the challenge. So here goes
with this dialogue in Hallon.

"'Shegu gumadal sim on gumadal urat den,'" voi O'Brien.... "Go dos
eva demasha, Winston, dos urat den seda dalai icheda?"
..."Eva mu metavevegunom, Winston," si voi. "U sim eva mu demashadran
shegoda icheda niom na. Ha dos ovasha nul icagoda. Go dos urat den
icheda, em uboga? Go dos erashim, sularat seda vuret edin, shil urat
den sovim sim?"
"Mu."
"Om doda, shim urat den icheda, om ji icheda?"
"Em rusha. Saleda si."
"Em nemat. Em ninule nom."
"Em ninule. Ji, shavut. Ha, Bolde, gumadal ora rusha, mo ha gumadal
ora ninule. Sus ha gumadal urat den, go mu?"

Here is a reasonably literal translation back into English. Verbs have been
left uninflected to correspond to Hallon usage:

"'He-who control now [separator] control old time,'" say O'Brien....
"[Question] that you think, Winston, that old time with real exist?"
..."You no metaphysician, Winston," he say. "To now you not
think-about that-which exist mean [-]. I put question more exactly.
[Question] that old time exist, in space? [Question] that certain-place,
world with solid things, where old time happen now?"
"No."
"If [you grant] that, where old time exist, if indeed exist?"
"In records. It is written."
"In the mind. In the memory of man."
"In memory. Yes, good. We, the Party, control all records, and we
control all memory. In this way we control the old time, [question]
not?"

Where verbs exist at all, they are not in any obvious tense. Where it is
necessary to show a tense, Hallon relies on other expressions to indicate
this. Thus the words "U sim" ("To now") necessarily implies that what
follows is a past action or state, although there is no difference in the
verb form. All other verbs in the dialogue are present tense anyway - note
that "It is written" is the *present* passive.

So even such a passage is fairly easy to represent in a language without
tenses. Certainly no particular trouble was encountered in the placement of
adverbs.
--
ξ:) Proud to be curly

Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
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