Return-Path: Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with smtp (Linux Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0t5FEw-0000ZOC; Tue, 17 Oct 95 18:51 EET Message-Id: Received: from listmail.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id B03BC6C2 ; Tue, 17 Oct 1995 17:51:45 +0100 Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 10:20:34 -0400 Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Re: perfective counting X-To: Lojban List To: Veijo Vilva In-Reply-To: <199510141241.IAA28083@locke.ccil.org> from "ucleaar" at Oct 14, 95 01:41:02 pm Content-Length: 1622 Lines: 35 la lojbab. joi la .and. cusku be di'e casnu > > 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, It's required when you attach a scalar negator to a sumti. LAhE and NAhE+BO have essentially the same grammar: see the sumti paper s.v. "sumti qualifiers". > > 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. It would be incorrect iff the event never occurs, that is. But I would not want to presume that "ka'e" or "nu'o" is normally the right thing in the future tense: when I say the sun will rise tomorrow, I mean it will {ca'a} rise. > 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. Yes, he means that. In Loglan, JCB has said (though he isn't consistent about it) that tenseless bridi are interpreted as {ka'e} (for which he has no equivalent). We take tenseless bridi as having the default tense (in the extended Lo??an sense of "tense"), whatever that may be in context. Surely "ca'a" is the default most of the time, but not necessarily always. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban.