From lojbab Mon Mar 14 10:52:39 1994 Subject: Re: "late" To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu From: John Cowan Date: Mon, 14 Mar 1994 10:52:39 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojbab (Logical Language Group) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 1323 Status: RO Message-ID: la matius. cusku di'e > I discovered "lerci" in the gismu list before asking the question in the > previous post, but concluded that it meant "late" as in "late delivery". It > seems to me that "late" meaning "at an hour somewhere vaguely between 9.00pm > and 4.00am" and "late" meaning "delayed; after the expected time" are two > different concepts (saying "We met at a late hour" doesn't imply that the > hour was delayed in arriving :-) > > So, is there a link between these two meanings that I'm missing? I think that these are both "lerci", but with different x2's implicit. The latter is the simpler case: the x2 is simply an event, with respect to which x1 is late. So in the case of a "late delivery", it is late with respect to the (non-existent) event of expected delivery. However, the x2 can be vaguer than an event; it can be a cultural or personal standard. So "lerci be mi" means "late by me", as in ca le purlamdei mi cikna lerci mi Yesterday I was up late. A "late hour" is clearly more cultural than personal; we could speak of "lerci be loi merko", e.g. A modest change from "by standard x2" to "relative to event x2/by standard x2" would be worthwhile for both "lerci" and its partner "clira". -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.