Message-Id: <m0rFSGI-00006wC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Wed, 7 Dec 1994 19:37:51 GMT
Reply-To:     i.alexander.bra0125@oasis.icl.co.uk
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         i.alexander.bra0125@OASIS.ICL.CO.UK
Subject:      Re: TECH:  existential quantification
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 2678
Lines: 50

>I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make here.
>I may well be misinterpreting the word "state" in the description
>of {za'i}.  However one of it's connotations in English is
>state-of-affairs, which is a generalised situation as distinct
>from any particular event(s), and bears a close family relationship
>with "properties".  Some of us tend to think of {nu} as describing
>a discrete event, and we need some way of talking about the
>more abstract concept.  In particular, there's a danger that>in bridi like {mi
 djica lo nu broda}, we come up against the
>same old transparency/opacity problem w.r.t the event itself
>that we get with a more concrete object (e.g. {mi djica [tu'a]
>lo plise}), leading to a potentially infinite regress.
>
>It may well be that <{nu} vs. {za'i}> is not the answer to
>this one, but I'd like to know what is.

la lojbab cusku di'e
> If I understanbd your terminology, then "discrete event" for which you are
> associating with "nu" is rather too limiting.  I presume that discrete
> events include point events (mu'e) for which it is relevant that there is
> no "beginning" and no "end", since the event is not thought of as having
> a time-based structure, or it is a "state" (za'i), in which it has a
> beginning and an ending which are points (mu'e) and no substructure during the
> duration.

The concept I'm trying to describe has almost precisely nothing to do with
event contours.

When I talk about an individual event, what I was calling a discrete event,
it is in principle fully instantiated, i.e. all its details such as tense
are fixed (whether they're specified or even known).  We may talk about
such an event whether or not it actually occurs.  We can have a number of
such events and count them.

But there are times when what we're talking about is something much less
concrete - it is a generalisation which encompasses a wide range of possible
events which can be described in the given way.  This commonly occurs with
"modals" such as desire ({djica}), although not exclusively either way.
If I say {mi djica le nu limna}, I may not have any particularly fixed ideas
about whether to go in the morning or afternoon, to the beach or an indoor
swimming pool, etc.

The fact that Lojban turns what-is-desired into a sumti focuses attention
on it as an identifiable object.  (The other treatments of modals I've seen
handle it completely differently.)  I would like to be able to distinguish
in a relatively straightforward manner between the concrete event "I swim
(in the XYZ indoor swimming pool between 11:00 and 12:00 on Wednesday the
7th of December etc.)" and the abstract event "I swim".

mu'o mi'e .i,n.