From ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK Mon Aug 2 17:15:35 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 2 Aug 1993 17:15:34 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3474; Mon, 02 Aug 93 17:14:27 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 6843; Mon, 02 Aug 93 17:15:53 EDT Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1993 22:13:32 +0100 Reply-To: ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK Sender: Lojban list From: Mr Andrew Rosta Subject: Re: On the tense system X-To: lojban@cuvma.BITNET, Colin Fine To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: (Your message of Mon, 02 Aug 93 19:08:35 N.) <9308021812.AA43029@link-1.ts.bcc.ac.uk> Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: Colin writes: > And further asks: > ++++++++> > I note that I recently used "cacaho" to refer to an event located at > a stretch of time that includes the present, rather than to locate > one event with respect to another. What I was after was a "present > + imperfective" form, though I can find nothing glossed "imperfective" > in the most recent cmavo list. Actually my preference for how to > express this would be for "leinu broda" to be an argument of "ca". > Any suggestions about how do this? > >+++++++++ > You tell me what 'imperfective' means and I'll tell you how to say > it ;-) > (Imperfective is often used to cover any or all of incomplete, > repetitive and habitual) Well, the normal answer would be "viewing an event as if from the interior". But I think a better answer is that imperfectives refer to a non-delimited portion of the event (i.e. the start and end points are excluded from what is referred to). A spatial analogue is if you want to say "I see the wall" meaning "I see some but not necessarily all of the wall". In English "She was running" and "There is milk on the floor" involve this idea - an illimited mass of running or milk. > Seriously though, I use ca ca'o to mean 'is now in the temporal > interior of the extended event ...', which I suspect is what > you are after. > I think 'lei nu broda' is possible, but I anyway would probably > be misled by the 'lei' into thinking your are intending to massify > a number of probably disjoint events. The mass problem rears its head again! ----- mihelahomihe. And mihe.