Message-Id: <m0t45un-0000ZPC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Sat, 14 Oct 1995 13:41:02 +0100
Reply-To:     ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From:         ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject:      perfective counting
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 3050
Lines: 62

Lojbab
> >Now, imagine the act of counting to ten, {nu kacporsi li pano}.  If {nu
> >kacporsi li pano} then it must also be that {nu coa kacporsi li pano}
> >and {nu mou kacporsi li pano} and {nu cou kacporsi li pano}.  If you
> >start counting but stop at two, then this can be described as {nu coa
> >kacporsi li re} or {nu coa nu dahi kacporsi li pano} or {nu coa nu dahi
> >kacporsi li vovovovovovo}, with the last two pragmatically implying that
> >the counter's intention was to get to 10 and 444444 respectively.  But
> >if you stop at two, it is not the case that there is an event of you
> >counting to ten.  Since there is no such event, you cannot describe its
> >start - you cannot say {coa kacporsi li pano}.
> OK.  This makes sense iff the discussion is about a future counting to
> 10, given no pragmatic considerations.

I expressed myself badly - by "you cannot say" I meant "you cannot
truthfully say", not "you cannot communicatively say".

> But of course, any time we are talking about the future using
> standard (non-dream) epistemologies, we cannot "know" what is to
> occur, and thus I think all future tenses have an implicit da'i
> even if it is not stated.

Not semantically, they don't. Logicosemantically, {ba broda} and
{dahi ba broda} are very different.

> And of course, if you were talking about a past event where you
> know that the person stopped at two, you would not talk about nu
> da'i kacporsi na'ebo li re because no other number occured.

I don't understand {bo} here, but I think I get your point. One
might wish to describe someone commencing the task of counting
to ten in a game of hide and seek, even if the counting was
never completed. I was arguing that {pu coa kacporsi li pano} was
untrue, but not necessarily an inappropriate description, but
Jorge has now persuaded me that it is of rather indeterminate
truth, since {coa kacporsi} is kind of tanruey, or like a nonce lujvo.

> Jorge suggests a different idea when he mentions the interpretation of
> tenselessness.  One doesn't need "da'i" if one simply presumes that in
> dealing with future tenses, one is normally dealing with an implicit
> ka'e or nu'o instead of ca'a.  Only an explicit "ca'a" would then be
> incorrect.

Are you saying that without an explicit {caa}, a bridi is unspecified
for {caa} versus {kae} versus whatever else? I find such vagueness
rather excessive.

> PS. kacporsi looks backwards to me.  I think it should be porkancu,
> which is a kind of counting rather than a kind of sequence.

Jorge made the same emendation. But IAm not sure I agree with you
both. {kancu} means oreckon up the cardinality ofo - a different sense
of ocounto than the meaning outter integer-names in sequenceo, and of
course that latter sense of count *is* a sequence - a sequence of utterings
of integer names. Admittedly, it is not the utterer that is a sequence, so
maybe I got the place structure wrong.

But then again, IAm not sure I approve of jvajvo or jvojva, so I might
just as well go along with whatever you prefer.

---
And