Date: Sun, 01 Jan 1995 19:22:46 +0000 (GMT)
From: Iain Alexander <ia@STRYX.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Measurements (ex ago, terse tense, etc.)
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To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Reply-to: ia@STRYX.DEMON.CO.UK
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Did we not once decide that the way to express

        "three metres" as a distance is {li ci poi se mitre},
        "seven years" as a time interval is {li ze poi se nanca}

?
Mind you, that doesn't get us very far - {zu'a li ci poi se mitre} =
"to the left of three metres", which doesn't make much sense.
I can't even see at the moment how to make an appropriate predication,
never mind contract it to a tense or at least tagged sumti.
{zunle} etc. don't have any obvious place for the distance -
you could probably jam one in with {la'u} or {fi'o se <measure>},
but that seems like cheating.
The measurement words have only a single place for the thing
being measured.  And I can't find a gismu for "distance" ({nildarno}?),
although {temci} works for times.
How _do_ we say "The window is three metres to the left of the door"?
Can we just say

        le canko bi'i le vorme cu mitre li ci

(plus something for "to the left of")
?

mu'o mi'e .i,n.
--
Iain Alexander (ia@stryx.demon.co.uk)