Message-Id: <199308161959.AA15180@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date:         Mon, 16 Aug 1993 15:57:13 EDT
Reply-To: Jorge LLambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Jorge LLambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Still a few thoughts about ZAhOs
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
Status: O

>
>    Presumably, Paul's coming to damascus has long ago _left_ its ba'o
>    stage too,
>
> No! Right now, this very minute, Paul's going to Damascus is in {ba'o} state.
>

Ok, if that is what it means. But this is not what others have been saying.
This doesn't affect the argument that pu-pu'o and ba-ba'o are crossed.

> Please remember, the ZAhO tenses are *different* from English and
> *different* from the other Lojban tenses.

I don't dispute that, and I'm not using the English nor any other
language's tenses in my argument.

> They are an attempt to
> emulate, (cleanly, without cruft, and in an interesting fashion) some
> ways of dealing with events/states that are present in some
> non-English languages.

I think Greek is one of them, right? Is the Greek inchoative a tense
that looks like the past tenses, the future tenses or none of them?
And the perfective? Could anyone make a brief summary of how the Greek
tenses look, or is it not too easy to explain in a short paragraph?


> They are not *time* tenses in the way English
> speakers think of them, but are best described by the term that is
> used for them:  event contours.
>
No problem with that.


> It is a happy accident that you can often translate event contours to
> English time tense in a sufficiently accurate manner that you have
> communication.  But non-stilted translations can be innaccurate and
> misleading.  If you want to be accurate, say something like "Paul's
> going to Damascus is in an aftermath state."  As soon as you express
> the translation like that, it is clear that you have not left the
> aftermath state.
>
So can I say that my going to the Moon is in its inchoative state, or do
I have to have some expectation that my going to the moon will actually
occur in order to say it?  Does the fact that Paul went to Damascus suffice
to say that since then the going is in an aftermath state?

Again, this may well be the right interpretation of the ZAhOs, but
it seems that everybody has a different idea of what they mean.

Jorge