Message-Id: <199308252229.AA01418@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date:         Wed, 25 Aug 1993 18:24:42 EDT
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>
Subject:      Re: TECH: QUERY on ZI & ZEhA
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
Status: O

>I like the other interpretation of double tenses, why should we have
>to assume a "ku"?

Because the grammar doesn't consider the two in a single tense to be
grammatical (and there probably is no unambiguous way to make it do
so with all plausible orders of tenses).  The grammar DOES consider
some ordeings of tenses to be a single tense, of course, but then
when you do so, there is a specific grammatical hierarchy and structure
that Ideally should dictate the semantics (it sdoesn't always, but should
wherever possible).

>nAnd why is "mi ba'o klama" different from "mi klama ba'oku", but
>"mi ba klama", the same as "mi klama baku"? Or isn't it?

The latter two are the same; the former two are not.  This is because
"ba" is a pure tense, and the head of a tense structure. "ba'o" is
not since it has an implicitly ellipsized value from among pu/ca/ba and
from among ze'i/ze'a/ze'u/ze'e.  They are not grammatically identical.

But even if they were, it has already been stated that the basis for the
perfective tenses is some event, and not the space-time origin.  They are
two mutually incompatible conventions.  You cannot use one as the basis
for interpreting sentences built on the other.  Likewise, the story-time
convention is incompatible with either of the two.  We did what we had to
to make each system self-consistent.

JO> How do I say "I'm about to finish eating"?

le nu mi citka pu'o mulno
mi ca'ojebazico'u mulno

I'm sure there are other possibilities.

A key point about the Lojban tense system - while it is probably more powerful
than any single natlangs tense systems, it cannot say everything that could
be expressed using tense, especially complex and compound tenses.  Tense uis
after all an abbreviuation for a subordinate metalinguistic bridi about time
(or space) relationships.  If you have two points you want to make about
the time relationship, you may need to use two sentences, or even 3.

There is no ZAhO tense defined for "about to finish".  the fact that one
possibly coining doesn't work is not grounds for throwing it out.  We had
already decided for example that we didn;t have or necessarily need a
superinchoative tense, either.

lojbab