From LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Sat Mar 6 23:00:02 2010 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 17 Dec 1992 12:49:49 -0500 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 1215; Thu, 17 Dec 92 12:49:16 EST Received: from CUVMB.BITNET by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 8733; Thu, 17 Dec 92 12:48:07 EST Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 17:39:57 GMT Reply-To: C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK Sender: Lojban list From: C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK Subject: TECH: more on ZAhO To: Erik Rauch Status: O X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Thu Dec 17 17:39:57 1992 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Message-ID: As indicated in my last mail on (my suggested) xa'o, I thought there was some thought needed on ZAhO as sumti tcita. My thoughts are these. Tenses (including ZAhO) and simple tags (BAI) can all be used in three different circumstances, viz: sumti tcita: mi cadzu ca li pano I walk at 10 (o'clock) mi cadzu ca'o le vanci I walk during the evening mi cadzu vine'i le panka I walk in the park mi cadzu fe'eco'u le daplu I walk to the end of the island mi cadzu bai le jatna I walk compelled by the boss mi cadzu mu'i leli'i se zdile I walk (motivated by) the enjoyment selbri tcita mi ca cadzu I walk now mi ca'o cadzu I am in the middle of walking mi vine'i cadzu I walk, inside (not "I walk inside" which in the most obvious meaning of that would be"mi mo'ine'i cadzu") mi fe'eco'u cadzu I am at the (spatial) end of my walk mi bai cadzu Compelled, I walk mi mu'i cadzu With some motive, I walk jufra tcita .icabo mi cadzu At the same time, I walk .ica'obo mi cadzu Throughout (that time/event) I walk .ivine'ibo mi cadzu Inside (that), I walk .ife'eco'ubo mi cadzu At the end (of that) I walk .ibaibo mi cadzu Compelled (by that), I walk .isemu'ibo mi cadzu For that reason, I walk [There are also a couple more contexts that are I believe essentially the same as jufra tcita: panrytergerna tcita, (connected phrase labels): .ecabo, gi'ecabo, jecabo] One reason for separating these three is that they are syntactically different contexts, but then so are panrytergerna tcita. A more important reason is that they are semantically different, in an unfortunately inconsistent way. In the case of simple tenses, you can paraphrase the selbri tcita and jufra tcita in terms of the sumti tcita, approximately: .icabo mi cadzu = .i mi cadzu ca la'e di'u quite clearly; and mi ca cadzu = mi cadzu ca da where the identity of "da" isn't totally clear, but is something like "ti" or "le cabna". With some of the other tcityma'o, the same is true: in the example, "vine'i", and "bai" work that way. Unfortunately the remainder do not. First, there is a plain inconsistency I have commented on before, motivated as far as I am aware only by history: .imu'ibo mi cadzu means .i mi cadzu semu'i la'e di'u and .isemu'ibo mi cadzu means .i mi cadzu mu'i la'e di'u As indicated above, I believe that mi mu'i cadzu means mi cadzu mu'i da rather than mi cadzu semu'i da but I have never seen a ruling on this. The other is in my view a rather better motivated inconsistency, stemming from the meanings of the words concerned (and mentioned in "Imaginary Journeys"): ZAhO words are highly assymetric in their meanings, and it seems desirable to let the different contexts mean different things. Thus mi ba'o cadzu = I have been walking (and have now stopped) but mi cadzu ba'o li pano = I walked after 10 I think (but am not certain) that .iba'obo mi cadzu = Afterwards, I walked. Thus .iba'obo mi cadzu = .i mi cadzu ba'o la'e di'u but the only way I can see to transform the selbri tcita is very indirect: mi ba'o cadzu = le cabna cu balvi lenu mi cadzu - this is only approximate, and in any case does not work because "ba'o" has a more precise meaning than "balvi". This was my problem with "xa'o"/"pu'o". I was looking for a word to use as selbri tcita, and so missed the fact that "pu'o" would do, but only as sumti tcita. I think this is a lack. What can be done about it? I considered overloading "se" even further, thus eg mi ba'o cadzu = mi cadzu seba'o le cabna but I'm not sure that this would work grammatically (it would need a change anyway), and it conflicts a bit with SE BAI constructions - often, because of the meaning of the BAI it does behave the same way, but that depends on the place structure of the brivla The 'solution' I have come up with is to use KU. (I put solution in quotes because it does not formally fill the need I describe, but I think it does pragmatically. Grammatically a tcita may stand alone as a sumti (though in most contexts it needs a 'ku' to terminate it. Thus mi cadzu ca means mi cadzu ca da I am not sure what the da is really, but pragmatically, it can often be taken to be such things as le cabna or ti or la'edi'u or zu'i (the typical it) So transforming the selbri tcita examples from above: mi caku cadzu I walk now mi vine'iku cadzu I walk, inside mi baiku cadzu Compelled, I walk mi mu'iku cadzu With some motive, I walk I think mean pretty much the same as their counterparts without "ku". But with ZAhO: mi ca'o cadzu I walk during (it) mi fe'eco'u cadzu I walk at the end (of it) This will therefore meet my needs: mi pu'oku zbasu le ci patxu mi denpa pu'o li paso mi pu'oku ca nanca li cizepini'uso'u I'm still not sure whether I can turn the fourth example round or not. Colin Lujvo and Tanru: selbri tcita selbri tag jufra tcita sentence tag panrytergerna panra te gerna = parallel grammatical structure "x1 is an arm of a binary connected structure x2, with connective x3" tcityma'o tcita cmavo tag-word