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Time and ActionIllustrativeConceptualisedControversy: low

Aspect and Event State

Is the action beginning, continuing, repeated, attempted or completed?

Grammatical marking of the internal temporal shape of an event, independent of when it occurred.

Graft transformationField record → structural reading → speculative construct → running machine
  1. T1 · Documented

    Attested in 1 language: Mandarin Chinese.

    What linguistic research records.

  2. T2 · Interpreted

    state machines collapse rich event shapes into a small set of statuses

    How Lanskrit reads the code deficit.

  3. T3 · Proposed

    state-carrying values (Attempted<T>, Ongoing<T>, Completed<T>)

    Speculative constructs — not executable code.

  4. T4 · Executed

    Not yet compiled to a deterministic runtime.

    Deterministic runtime — the graft as running machinery.

§ EvidenceFour tiers of verifiability

Each tier is a different kind of claim. We keep them visually distinct so a reader can never confuse a field record with a deterministic run.

T1Documented

Documented

What linguistic research records.

  • beginning, middle and end of a process
  • repetition and habituality
  • attempts distinguished from completions
T2Interpreted

Interpreted

How Lanskrit reads the code deficit.

  • state machines collapse rich event shapes into a small set of statuses
  • attempt-vs-completion distinctions are commonly discarded
T3Proposed

Proposed

Speculative constructs — not executable code.

  • state-carrying values (Attempted<T>, Ongoing<T>, Completed<T>)
  • process descriptors
T4Executed

Executed

Deterministic runtime — the graft as running machinery.

No executable runtime yet. This capability has not been compiled to a deterministic machine.

Computational opportunities
  • richer state machines
  • process modelling primitives
  • interruption and retry semantics
  • attempted-versus-completed distinctions in effects
Warnings against overgeneralisation
  • Aspect is not a synonym for tense; do not conflate the two.
Documented in languages

Cited as examples of the feature, not as claims about all speakers of these languages.

Related capabilities
Research status

Illustrative

Research source pending verification.

Strong candidate for a future graft focused on process state.

Version
Record version
0.2
Last reviewed
2026-07-21
Controversy level
low