Past, present and future are not enough

Science fiction writers imagine whole new universes and explore their possibilities, as we’ve mentioned before.  Perhaps they need to think about the changes in language that go along with them.

Our tutoring consultant works next to a tutor specializing in English.  Recently the discussion in the next cubicle has turned to verb tenses, and what confusion might arise from the invention of a time machine.  Our example: suppose some event in your past annoyed you.  You travel back in time and arrange that it not happen.  Back in your own time, how do you describe the event that now had never happened, but once—in some way—had occurred?  Well, the grammatical problems of time travel have been explored at least once, in Douglas Adams’ The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, though he offered no practical resolution.

Other problems arise.  In the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, which contains quite a bit of science fiction (much to the annoyance of Calvin’s parents), of course Calvin does some time traveling.  In one case he goes forward and back until there are three of him arguing with each other.  In this case we need a first-person singular/plural conjugation, to cover all the Calvins as opposed to just one of them.

Or consider the episode where Calvin builds a duplicator and duplicates himself.  We need a first/first person singular, to be used by one duplicate alone; a first/second, for one duplicate talking to another; a first/third, for one duplicate talking about another; and similar constructions for the second and third person, when someone talks to or about a duplicate.  It’s no wonder that Calvin’s parents, teachers and classmates have trouble understanding him: they simply don’t have the language to cover it.

Other languages do make number distinctions that don’t exist in modern English.  Old English and Gaelic distinguish between one, a pair, and higher numbers; Russian shifts the construction of some noun cases at five objects.  So developing grammar to cover science-fiction situations is certainly possible.  We throw out this challenge to science fiction authors: create the proper language for your imagined universe!  (Of course, requiring people to learn an extended English grammar in order to read your books will cut into sales a bit.)

Meanwhile, our physicist reminds us that languages develop slowly and not always logically.  Even after almost a century, we still don’t have a form of the verb “to be” that adequately covers the situation of Schrödinger’s Cat.