Re: CCAT: TIME mission & tenses

dwig@markv.com

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To: Fritz Lehmann <fritz@rodin.wustl.edu>
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In-reply-to: <9410110122.AA17890@rodin.wustl.edu> (message from Fritz Lehmann on Mon, 10 Oct 94 20:22:40 CDT)
Subject: Re: CCAT: TIME mission & tenses
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 94 9:54:23 PDT
From: dwig@markv.com
Message-id: <9410110955.aa22966@hermix.markv.com>
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In the "for what it's worth" department:

On state: I just finished an article on the Cleanroom software development
method, which uses a three-level approach to defining system behaviors.  At
the top level, a system is viewed as a black box, which accepts sequences of
stimuli and produces sequences of responses.  The behavioral specification
is given in terms of conditions on a sequence of stimuli which will cause a
given response.  At the next level, this specification is elaborated in
terms of a state machine.  I thought you might find this use of "histories"
as alternatives to "states" worth considering.

On tense: I have somewhere in my archives a Rand paper from the early '70s
by J. L. Kuhns, analyzing English tenses in terms of three times: the current
time (time of the speech act), the event time, and a reference time.  The
relation of the reference time to the other two allows representing perfect
tenses, etc. (I should say that it's been a long time since I read the
paper, and I may be misquoting it).  I can probably unearth the paper if
it's worth it.


Don Dwiggins				"Solvitur Ambulando"
Mark V Systems, Inc.
dwig@markv.com