From blindbravado@gmail.com Thu Feb 25 13:18:39 2010 Received: from mail-bw0-f219.google.com ([209.85.218.219]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Nkl6R-0007P8-FO for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:18:39 -0800 Received: by bwz19 with SMTP id 19so5093926bwz.26 for ; Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:18:28 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=kKWQ+wn4GPbe5pfTtXkL2sfM+ewlcWRJyciYEmt2Lcs=; b=oPBuQG1nxfce5q5v/fQeb+ErDS2F+GzEaL0KbaECOQVAgL68+FPhcxRpgLrjlLcxSr 2gA8+Xr6AL6wVavJL4qBiPt0G5ZHw8HldOgFlmHnmzudfV1UO/ZYMZfAVsW9x/cLQfqs iIK0iTj3cIqWjDt0gTyF4gOpp/1ooprvM1B+g= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=RtylxiKTXJgTQLQJxYoWnPWCiHGQsoYtr0H9sRs2lfwv5QUTEmBf3u6NHX0D48+6+z pGaNhl8fFWk/EvhzzRBNId/pyzPK1JYgu6FMq36yp3KnpkCBva3SCQfjLo3i3+5CynoP BpcC5r9t+9odURrNoCCQtc8ssLUPzm634/xAA= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.204.6.203 with SMTP id a11mr208658bka.33.1267132707123; Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:18:27 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <925d17561002250954p6d57ef87w3cde7fd92a9fe7d9@mail.gmail.com> References: <1f1080831002250758rb17bd2dk664e035452c298e4@mail.gmail.com> <925d17561002250954p6d57ef87w3cde7fd92a9fe7d9@mail.gmail.com> Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:18:27 -0500 Message-ID: <1f1080831002251318p78bab1dbha716f66a082c0daf@mail.gmail.com> Subject: Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: Tenses in abstractions From: Ian Johnson To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable 2010/2/25 Jorge Llamb=EDas : > On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 12:58 PM, Ian Johnson wr= ote: >> I tried translating "When did you go to sleep last night?" I know >> about {sumti tcita} for this (ti'u), but I'm not sure if you can use >> them to fill 3 of tcika's places instead of just 2, so I did: >> ma lenu do pu co'a sipna cu tcika le prulamcte (be le cabdei) >> >> I have four questions: >> 1. Just in general, is that structured other-than-terribly? > > The "pu" is a bit redundant, since "last night" already shows that it > was in the past. > > I would say: > > =A0 ti'u ma do co'a sipna ca lo prulamcte > =A0 "At what time did you fall asleep last night?" I like that form; as I mentioned I would've used ti'u if I could think of a more elegant way to do it than {ti'u} and {teti'u} (at that point, as I was saying, you might as well just use tcika, in my opinion). It feels less clunky and is of course shorter. I suspect that I've started leaning on {nu} structures more than I should, seeing this and some of the past responses to my questions. >> 4. As in the title, how does time work in abstractions which are >> assigned tenses outside the abstraction? Here the event is assigned a >> time in the past by the x3 place of {tcika}; so what happens to the >> {pu}? Is it now before the assigned time of the abstraction (meaning >> that in this case the {pu} is not what is wanted)? Is it relative to >> the main {bridi}? > > {lo nu do pu co'a sipna} descibes a start of sleeping that happened > before something. It doesn't say before what exactly, but the usual > reference is the time of the utterance. Since you are already saying > by other means that this starting event took place last night, the > "pu" doesn't really add much. OK, I see. I think what I was thinking, while a somewhat interesting concept (an abstraction has tense(s) associated with it, and tense(s) within that abstraction are thus relative to that time, rather than to the speaker), I suspect that it might have issues with recursion (a problem that is mentioned in LfB a few times, such as with using {ri} in relative clauses) and would thus be a problematic feature in general. mu'omi'e latros.