Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Fri, 3 Sep 1993 05:06:53 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Fri, 3 Sep 1993 05:06:49 -0400 Message-Id: <199309030906.AA19205@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 7500; Fri, 03 Sep 93 05:05:17 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 1779; Fri, 03 Sep 93 05:08:10 EDT Date: Fri, 3 Sep 1993 10:02:16 BST Reply-To: I.Alexander.bra0125@oasis.icl.co.uk Sender: Lojban list From: Iain Alexander Subject: TECH: To become or not to become X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Fri Sep 3 05:06:53 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET I had a couple more thoughts on "becoming", but didn't have time to add them to the last message. {co'a} has been suggested in the past as a good way to do this, and sometimes it works. The problem comes when the "becoming" is a long drawn out process. le pu'u co'a makcu Growing up This is OK, and we can even emphasise the time span with {ze'u}, but we've been talking (recently) about {co'a} and {co'u} as if they were point events. Perhaps we should occasionally draw our event contours with a shallow slope for the end points. -------- / \ / \ / \ ------/ \------ pu'o co'a ca'o co'u ba'o Another possibility is {cfari}. I remember it as having an agent, but checking in the gimste I'm currently working from, it is intransitive. cfari cfa initiate x1 (state/event/process) commences/initiates/starts/begins to occur; (intransitive verb) 2c 104 le pu'u cfari fa lo za'i makcu Again I've tended to think of {cfari} as describing a fairly discrete, point event, but maybe this is misleading. ko te pinka .e'o la'e so'o di'u mu'o mi'e .i,n.