Message-Id: <199512090018.CAA08556@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Fri, 8 Dec 1995 23:57:43 +0000
Reply-To: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject:      Re: ZAhO and tanru
To:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
Content-Length: 3362
Lines: 83

Lojbab
> >My current argument is first that I've yet to see anything tensey
> >(as opposed to aspectual) about ZAhO,
> You are playing with terminology.

I am using terminology appropriately. If you wish to deem that play,
then I will not disagree, for in the uttering of words there is indeed
pleasure.

> Tense/aspect/modality ALL have to do with events and bridi events at
> that in Lojban, because EVERYTHING has to do with bridi events.
> tanru are ambiguous shorthands, and we have tried to minimize the
> use of cmavo inside tanru.

I don't know what a bridi event is, and suspect that if "bridi event"
turns out to have any meaning it will be the same as "event". I therefore
cannot at present agree that "EVERYTHING has to do with bridi events".

> >For example, consider {mi coa citka}. That must say more than that
> >the eating has a beginning, because every eating has a beginning.
> >So I have been understanding it to be creating a new selbri with
> >predictable meaning "begin to eat", so {le nu coa citka} or {nu zei
> >coa zei citka} is an achievement rather than an activity.
> No. "mi co'a citka" is a bridi describing a point event,

What exactly are you saying "No" to?
By "a bridi" I understand you to mean "lo valsi be lo bridi".
In what sense does it "describe" a point event? That's too vague
for me to understand.

> but it IS possible to look at that point event as having substructure.
> So nu mi co'a citka could be ANY of the 4 Aristotelian event types.

It is entirely possible that something can be conceptualized either
as a point event or as an activity, but equally the same thing can
be conceptualized as a blob of red cabbage. So I don't dispute what
you say, but don't find it relevant to the issue of the semantics of
ZAhO.

> > But now you seem to be saying that it means "I begin to eat now",
> > while {mi bao citka} wd mean "I am no longer eating".
> Yes.  And this is is what perfectives mean in Russian too, which is
> the only natlang I know that uses them. Actually Russian only has pu'o
> ca'o and ba'o, come to think of it.

I see. How would you say "I began to eat"? Is there any difference
between {mi cao citka} and {mi ca citka}? How would you say "I
was eating"?

I don't know how the Russian grammatical feature called "perfective"
works. "Perfective" as a grammaticosemantic term means that an
entire event rather than a portion of extending beyond one's
horizons is described/referred to. So it's not necessarily tied
to tense.

> >If we must have ZAhOs, I like them better working in the quasitanruish
> >NAhE way.
> perfectives have no real meaning as "selbri" - they need to be
> instantiated with sumti to have meaning.

I presume that - whether by accident or by strange design - by
"perfectives" you meant ZAhOs. If I presume correctly, then what
are the sumti of ZAhOs?

> na'e alters the meaning of the selbri itself - on some scale,

Well we agee on this at least.

> without necessarily referring to any of its sumti

Does NAhE have sumti?

> (which of course can make the implied scale rather ambiguous when
> na'e is used inside a tanru)

If {cukta nanmu} is "book person", then why shouldn't {cukta nae
nanmu} be, no more and no less straightforwardly, "book non-person"?

I have dutifully returned to TENSE.TXT, but do not find that the
discussion there extinguishes my confusion.

---
And