Message-Id: <m0sAhP2-0009acC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 13:27:40 EDT
Reply-To:     jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From:         jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU
Subject:      Re: Questions
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 1820
Lines: 44

> >> >      la djan. ne pu la mark. [ge'u] [cu] melbi tavla [vau]
> >> >     John, who was (incidentally) before Mark, is a beautiful-talker.
> >>
> >> Doesn't this show exactly the confusion about {pu} mentioned earlier?
> >> {la mark.} is not an event.
> >
> >I agree with you. It might mean, I suppose, that John lived before
> >Mark was born.
>
> Why is "la mark." not an event?

I tend to understand it as "Mark", which is a common English name
for persons. Of course, it can be the name of an event, but that's
not what the English gloss above suggests.

> First of all, it is a named thing, and
> it is possible that the speaker is simply labeling some event "Mark"
> (which could be a lifetime, or it could be an act of speaking).

In that case, the English translation is very misleading.

> If you
> grant that you can label an event with a name of course, then the
> default assumption is indeed likely that the event named "Mark" happens
> to be the lifetime of someone named Mark.

Yes, but events are not usually beautiful talkers. It is hard for me
to imagine an event talking, unless it's in a metaphorical sense.
(Actions talking louder than words, and such.)

> Now I agree that "tu'a la mark." might be more logically explicit, but I
> am not sure that it conveys any additional information - you've simply
> explicitly said that Mark is a place in some event, and the time
> comparison is with the event.  But it says nothing more about what kind
> of event (an act of speaking, or a lifetime), so why not just keep
> things simple.

Even {tu'a la mark} is logically suspect, because it is being attached
to the sumti {la djan}, not to the event of John's talking.

As for keeping things simple, that argument could be used for never
using {tu'a}, and forgetting about sumti raising problems.

Jorge