SUO: Two additional perspectives on situations, processes, etc.
Hopefully not to muddy the water too much further, I'd like to bring to the
group's attention two additional perspectives on situations, processes,
etc., to see if anyone has any comments about how they relate to approaches
already discussed -- perhaps they are subsumed, or considered irrelevant,
invalid, etc., though to me they each seem to have some merit -- in any
case, I'd be very interested in anyone's insights.
The first is the approach presented by Robert C. Moore:
“We really need to say little more than (1) that situations are part of the
causal order of the world rather than an abstraction of it, and (2) that
situations are in one-to-one correspondence with true propositions. …a
situation is a piece of reality that consists of an n-tuple of entities
having an n-ary property or relation … a proposition is simply an
abstraction of a situation … a true proposition is one that is the
abstraction of an actual situation.” -- Robert C. Moore, "Logic and
Representation", Moore, CSLI Publications, Stanford, p. 164-5.
Moore then suggests that an event should be considered as consisting of a
set of interrelated situations happening over some time period. Thus the
motion of an object from A to B over a time period consists of a collection
of situations where the object is located at different points at different
times.
The second perspective is presented by the linguist Bernard Comrie:
“… a situation may be either a state, or an event, or a process. … states
are static, i.e. continue as before unless changed, whereas events and
processes are dynamic, i.e. require a continual input of energy if they are
not to come to an end; events are dynamic situations viewed as a complete
whole (perfectively), whereas processes are dynamic situations viewed in
progress, from within (imperfectively).” -- Bernard Comrie (1976), "Aspect:
An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems",
Cambridge University Press, p. 13.
Richard K. Harrison's website on artificial natural languages gives a
summary of Comrie's analysis of aspect and tense:
"In the sentence 'she was singing when I entered', the verb 'entered'
presents its action as a single event with its beginning, middle, and end
included; this is an example of the perfective aspect. The verb 'was
singing', on the other hand, refers to an internal portion of her singing,
without any reference to the beginning or end of her singing; this is an
example of imperfective aspect. In other words, the perfective treats a
situation as a single shapeless whole, similar to the concept of a 'point'
in geometry, while the imperfective looks at the situation from the inside
out and admits the possibility that the situation has a temporal shape.
'Situation' refers to anything that can be expressed by a verb: a 'state' (a
static situation that will remain the same unless something changes it), an
'event' (a dynamic situation considered as a complete, single item) or a
'process' (a series of dynamic transactions viewed in progress)." -- Richard
K. Harrison, Verb Aspect,
http://www.invisiblelighthouse.com/langlab/aspect.html.
Phil Jackson
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