Message-Id: <199511020046.TAA05085@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Wed, 1 Nov 1995 22:09:31 +0000
Reply-To: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject:      Re: perfective counting & katna
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

Chris:
> >Is {bai broda} possible? I didn't know it was. And if it is, I don't
> >know what it means.
> mi bai citka le plise  -> I eat the apple under duress/compulsion
> There's no place for the compellor without separating "bai" off and
> turning it into a proper tag.

So {mi bai citka} = {mi bai da ku citka}?

> >I sort of see. Kind of like {fau} then, except that whereas {fau}
> >is the sumti for the entire event, {coa} is the sumti for just
> >the initial bit of the event. Right? But in that case {coa li mu}
> >would still not make sense.
> Hmmm... how about {co'a tu'a li mu}?  If we were currently at the point
> in time when the counter was saying {li mu}, we would say {co'a katna},
> i.e. {katna co'a zo'e} i.e. {katna co'a ti} i.e. {katna co'a tu'a li mu}.

{tua} is glossed as "the bridi implied by" rather than by "the event
implied by". Bridi and events are different, and my current understanding
is that a sumti with ZAHO tcita shd denote an event. In this particular
case you could say {namcu cusku coa zo mu} ({katna} = "cut", not "count").

> >> > >  mi co'a citka le plise  --> I start eating the apple
> >> > > should be the same as:
> >> > >  mi co'a ku citka le plise
> >> > > and therefore
> >> > >  mi citka le plise co'a ku
> >> > > and therefore
> >> > >  mi citka le plise co'a da ku
> >> > But {coa citka} is a kind of tanru. {coa} alters the meaning of
> >> > the selbri, like {toe} but unlike, say, {na} or {pu}. I agree with
> >> > you both as far as {na} and {pu} are concerned, but see little
> >> > basis for deciding what the meaning of ZAHO as sumtcita shd be.
> I was off the list for a while and missed the rest of the message that
> contained this response, so I've only heard it out of context. But with
> BAI tags and tense tags there's a nice correspondence between the
> meaning when sticking it before the broda and using it as a sumti tcita.
> It seems like a nice idea to have ZAhO be consistent with {pu} and
> {bai}.

I don't yet see the consistency.

pu broda = pu ku broda = pu dei ku broda
bai broda = bai ku broda [is that grammatical?] = bai da ku broda
zao broda = zao ku broda = zao ???? ku broda

Ah - but maybe I follow you. ZAHO, I gather, are similar to {fau},
and {fau} is a BAI, so ZAhO are essentially like BAI. I wonder what
the syntactic difference is between them.

> {na} is a different story, pe'i, because it can't be a sumti tcita.

But it can be a sumti, so it's not a wholly different story.

> >> A better comparison might be with BAI. {broda bai <sumti>} is
> >> essentially {bai broda} but with an extra place, in this case for
> >> the compeller.
> Or to put it another way, {bai broda} could be seen as a shorthand for
> {broda bai zo'e}, just as {pu broda} is short for {broda pu zo'e}

Are you *sure* {pu broda} is short for {broda pu zo'e}? I think I'm
fairly sure it's not. It's short for {broda pu dei}, which in turn
is short for {broda fau lo purci be dei}.

---
And [ps Goran, Jorge: I haven't time to read your long Lojban postings
- sorry.]