As promised, I finally got round to posting my message on indefinite v
definite to Rick Harisson's language lab at invisiblelighthouse.com. If you
haven't seen this site yet it is well worth a visit, particularly the
essays on verb aspect and causatives. I have changed my ideas slightly -
following the discussions on Auxlang, it is clear that it is necessary to
have a category of "specific uncertainty". I reproduce the posting here:


Your essays on verb aspect and causatives at the Artificial language lab,
invisible lighthouse.com struck a cord with me.  The verb it seems is the
most basic word class and the most complex, but also the word class most
amenable to  systematic internally defined vocabulary building. The ideas
that follow might have their greatest significance on verbs, but could be
applied to other word classes as well. These ideas have developed out of
the dialog that followed my posting entitled “Indefinite v Definite” in
August 2003 on the Auxlang mailing list. My thanks to those at Auxlang who
contributed to the discussion.

It occurs to me that further systematisation can be achieved using the
concepts of indefiniteness/uncertainty, definiteness/certainty and specific
uncertainty. (Originally, I did not include the concept of specific
uncertainty, but as the essay goes on it should become apparent that all
three concepts are needed for the system to work.) In English the perfect
tenses are awkwardly formed using auxiliary verbs, other languages form it
in different ways. It seems to me that the most significant difference in
meaning between the perfect and simple tenses is that there is usually some
uncertainty as to the exact time that an occurrence occurred or the extent
to which an action has been completed whereas the simple tenses have
certainty in these areas. Compare, "I have been to Paris." and "I went to
Paris last year." Likewise, in the sentence "He's gone to Paris." We don't
know if he's on his way, or if he's actually arrived. It is important to
understand that the perfect tenses are marked by indefiniteness and not
specific uncertainty as we know that the actions have or will occur, we
just don’t know when. Not knowing if an action will or will not occur would
be an example of specific uncertainty.

Many artificial languages derive the perfect tenses from the simple tense
by means of a suffix, but since logically uncertainty precedes certainty -
first we are uncertain of something, only later when we receive proof do we
become more certain. It seems to me that it would be more logical to derive
the simple tenses from the perfect tenses.

Indefiniteness/uncertainty v definiteness/certainty occurs in other areas
of language most notably the indefinite and definite articles. Esperanto
and Ido do not have the indefinite article. In a way analogous to what I
have said above, it is sensibly taken as the default case. If the noun is
not definite then it is by default indefinite. The definite article in both
Esperanto and Ido is "La".

I know more about Ido than Esperanto, and the rest of my discussion refers
only to Ido, but could be extended to any suffix beginning with a vowel.

The infinitives in Ido are shown by the suffixes -ir, -ar and -or for past
present and future and the simple tenses by the suffixes -is, -as and -os
for the simple past, present and future.

By extending the use of "l" to mean "definite" or "certain" we could
reassign the simple tenses as the perfect tenses and form the simple past
present and future tenses with the suffixes -lis, -las and -los
respectively. Likewise the infinitives could be reassigned as perfect
infinitive (Which is a subtlety of language which I don't think currently
exist in Ido (correct me if I'm wrong) the simple infinitives being formed
as -lir, -lar and -lor. -"lar" incidentally is one of the ways of forming
the infinitive in Turkish.

Question words such as “who”, “what”, “where” and “when” begin with a /k/
sound in most languages (English is a notable exception but it was true in
the languages distant ancestry.) Question words all refer to a specific
uncertainty. This should be obvious since if we know the answer, we
wouldn’t be asking the question. I suggest that “k” should be used to mark
specific uncertainty.

The articles belong to the demonstratives word class could this idea be
extended to other demonstratives? Yes. Words for “this” and “that” and if
needed, “these” and “those” also refer to definite objects indeed in
English and German they are etymologically related to the definite article.
These words ought to begin with an “l”.

An indefinite/definite contrast exists between “any” and “some”. In
English “any” refers to indefinite amounts (also zero amounts) and “some”
refers to definite amounts the word for “any” should begin with a vowel and
the word for “some” should be this word prefixed by an “l”. “Any” can also
refer to a specific uncertainty and whatever word is used for it should be
prefixed by a “k” in such instances.

This could also be applied to the prepositions. “among” implies uncertainty
of position “between” implies greater certainty of position. “Below”
implies an indeterminate air-gap, “under” does not.

I am sure that there are many other areas where these ideas could be used,
and this was not intended to be an exhaustive list of all cases where these
ideas could be applied, indeed it would be impossible to compile such a
list as one could always find new areas where indefiniteness/uncertainty,
definiteness/certainty and specific uncertainty could be applied, and I
offer this essay as a taster of what could be done.

Andrew Patterson.
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