Aorist

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!shoulson>]

Indeed, Lojban has some scary tense stuff.  You should note, though, that
just because I call a tense "aorist" in Sanskrit means neither that it is
an aorist now (where "now"=the time of most classical Sanskrit
writings--however long ago that was), nor even that it ever was.  It's just
the name that later grammarians gave it.  In Skt, it has another name.  It
certainly wasn't always a simple past, but what it was need not have been
what we call an aorist.

Owing to its very broad definition of "tense", Lojban may be one of the
only languages that can claim to make all the distinctions possible in Skt
as it once was.  F'rinstance, one form (I don't remember which, nor even
its Skt name), was traditionally used for "past tense at which I was not
present", as opposed to past tense observed by the narrator (and, by
extension, it was also used for cases in which the narrator felt he wasn't
there owing to mental disorientation, as drunkenness.  The example my book
had was "I babbled like an idiot before the king".  Even though the speaker
was present, this form might be used stylistically).  I'll leave it to
Lojbab to prove that lojban can handle this kind of thing; I suspect it
can.

The actual tenses, in Classical Skt, rarely really made a difference.
Some semantic loading, to be sure, did rest on some forms.  There were all
sorts of options.  Some verbs could be conjugated in either the
parasmaipada or \=atmnepada systems (now called "active" and "middle"
voice, resp.  No relation to real meanings).  Only difference was the exact
form and meter, so you picked what sounded better.  Or even take a verb
that's usually parasmaipada and use it in \=atmanepada, if it sounds neat,
or vice versa.  For the most part, there was little semantic loading on
these choices by the time most Skt was being written, though I will concede
that there was some (even if only to indicate to the reader "See how well I
know the language!"  Kinda like Nick's praise of the E-o community, that
it's poets are held in such high esteem.  Command of the intricacies of the
language was always considered a status symbol.)

~mark