Date: Sat, 28 Jan 1995 23:56:44 +0000
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: ago
In-reply-to: (Your message of Sat, 28 Jan 95 13:13:11 EST.)
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To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Reply-to: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
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I've been failing to keep up with this debate, so please forgive
questions the answers to which have doubtless already been presented.

> Currently {zi}, {za} and {zu} have no use as sumti tcita. It is a waste
> to have such nice short words for something so abstruse as "some time
> to the past or future of...", which in any case if need be can be said
> with {pujaba}.
> Since ZIs and VAs are magnitudes of the displacement, and what we need
> is a way of identifying sumti as the magnitudes of the displacement,
> and the function that ZIs and VAs have now as tcita is totally redundant,
> I think it is clear that their sumti complement should be the magnitude
> of the displacement.

What are the arguments against? Reluctance to countenance change?

>         ko'a jbena pu le nunjamna za lei ci nanca
>         He was born past of the war, magnitude (medium) three years.
>         He was born three years before the war.

What is the rule whereby the za is understood as the displacement
of the pu?

I wonder whether it might be possible to give {pu} and its ilk an
extra argument, for the displacement: x1 is before x2 in magnitude
x3. I suspect that that might impose too great a change upon the
syntax.

---
And