Message-Id: <199308191856.AA20564@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date:         Thu, 19 Aug 1993 14:52:10 EDT
Reply-To: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: ZAhO: A view from the sidelines
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
Status: O

la djan cusku di'e

>
> It's not so simple.  As I have said before, the nature of ZAhO is really
> one-place -- it selects a portion of an event for salience -- and its
> use as a sumti tcita is only remotely connected with its use as a selbri
> tense.  This is not true for PU/FAhA, which are inherently two-place.


Ok, I have no problem in viewing them as one-place, but sometimes it seems
easier to view them as two-place. For instance, if you have two ZAhO's in a
row, the relevant phase of the second ZAhO goes in what I would like to call
the second place (the event proper) of the first ZAhO

        ___mi ca pu'o ba'o citka___
     I'm about to have finished eating (very poor translation, I know)

The point is that the "ba'o phase" goes in the "second place" of pu'o.
Maybe this can also be thought of from the one-place point of view,
starting from citka and going backwards, so that there are two types
of Journey, the PU going right, and the ZAhO going left, and meeting
at the point in time in which we are focusing. In any case, you do need
two places when using them as sumtcita, and they have to come from
somewhere.

I think that your reticence to consider them as two-place may come from
wanting to place the "focused-on time" in the second place, as happens with
the PUs. But this need not be so. We could think of the Journey being made
by the broda, for all the tenses, not by the time of the state that we are
talking about. The time of the state that we are describing would move only
with the PU's and be left in the way by the ZAhOs. This is just different
ways of thinking the same thing, it may not help to clarify anything, so
I won't insist.

I think that the strange thing about the ZAhOs as sumtcita, is that they
are not applied to the selbri of the main bridi. I suppose that in the
example you give in an answer to Veijo: "mi bai klama le zarci" ,
the "bai klama" is a compelled going rather than compelling, so
        "mi bai klama" => "mi klama bai ..."
        "mi pu klama" => "mi klama pu ..."
but     "mi ba'o klama" =/=> "mi klama ba'o ..." .
This is what I meant, that the rules for the ZAhO are different than for
the rest, even though they need not be. Maybe the current definition is
more useful, I don't think so, I'm just saying that it doesn't follow a
rule that it could follow. Of course, if it did follow the rule, the
contradiction between pu-pu'o and ba-ba'o would be very much more evident,
because "mi pu citka ba'o le nu do klama mi" would have to mean, that I was
finished eating by the time you came, similar to "mi pu citka pu le nu ..."
and not similar, like now, to "mi pu citka ba le nu ...", and that is why
I think that the two issues are related, and why I lament the rebelliousness
of the ZAhOs.

>
> The question is not why PU (as sumtcita) and ZAhO (as sumtcita) are
> inconsistent, but why they should be consistent in the first place.
>
Just to have a more regular language, I don't think there's any deeper
reason than that.

co'o mi'e xorxes