There are many barriers to time travel. Some consider the high level of technology the most difficult to pass. For others, it's the paradoxes - the logical anomalies inherent in the idea of time travel. However, these are minor inconveniences when compared with the international society of linguists. They have virtually enslaved the relevant physics departments until the special committee of temporal language can figure out how to deal with it. After all, we can't have people going around giving each other headaches over what they will do last weekend - we need some structure. Not only to prevent global headaches but also to allow these linguists to feel superior because they can speak properly and elegantly.
The problems encountered in temporal language are mostly due to a single question which is largely ignored. Who's timeline? Having identified this all that is necessary is to construct a convention to account for this. I think the following is logical but many other simple possibilities might exist.
- Where the owner of the timeline is not specified, it belongs to the subject.
- For a passive sentence, the global timeline is assumed.
To refresh your memory, the subject of a sentence is the person or thing we're thinking about. English is a subject - verb - object (SVO) language so usually the subject will be the first noun in the sentence. Let's try a few examples.
Now that we have some examples, we're ready to tackle the big issues.
The grandfather paradox is the irritating question that comes about because people have way too much time on their hands. Basically, you go back to before your parent of choice was conceived and kill you grandfather. In your timeline it is the future but in everyone else's it is the past. I suspect this will never be the subject of experiment in this form for three reasons: it would be a particularly nasty thing to do, also incredibly stupid and finally because it could well result in the end of the universe. Not even physicists are that curious. The paradox arises from the question: can we change actions in the global past and what happens if we do?
The self-loop paradox poses the same problems as before with an extra one: how can you get into a situation when you are in your own past? Are you stuck in such a loop? Going back in time to warn yourself may seem like a good idea at the time but be sure you've thought things through.