Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id TAA02676 for ; Fri, 13 Oct 1995 19:04:05 -0400 Message-Id: <199510132304.TAA02676@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v0.1a) with SMTP id 38C3DE98 ; Fri, 13 Oct 1995 19:04:44 -0400 Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 19:01:30 EDT Reply-To: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU Sender: Lojban list From: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU Subject: Re: perfective counting X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Fri Oct 13 19:04:07 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU la lojban cusku di'e > 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. There is only one future tense, namely {ba}, right? I don't agree that it has an implicit {da'i}. If you say {ba carvi} then you are saying that it will rain, and if it doesn't then you were wrong. > This seems similar to the ball-rolling-off-the-table problem, in which I > think we agreed that we could talk about something happening "pu'o lenu > farlu le loldi le jubme" even though it is perfectly possible that > someone might interfere and prevent the ball from reaching the floor. > "lenu" is in any case fine; "lonu" is questionable. I didn't agree to that. I think I can say {le bolci pu'o farlu le loldi le jubme} without claiming that {le bolci ba farlu le loldi le jubme}, but what you are saying with a sumti tcita is something different. (Actually, sumti tcita use of {pu'o} and {ba'o} is weird anyway, so preferably we shouldn't bring them into this.) > 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. That's not my position at all. When dealing with the future tense, my position is that you are claiming that the event _will_ indeed happen. On the other hand, when dealing with [ca]pu'o you are describing the present, not the future, and so whatever eventually does end up happening is not the main concern. Jorge