Message-Id: <199601161650.SAA14051@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Tue, 16 Jan 1996 12:15:23 -0500
Reply-To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Subject:      Re: PLI: lo nu cinba, lo se pixra
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
In-Reply-To:  <199601120906.EAA23269@locke.ccil.org> from "Goran Topic" at Jan
              12, 96 01:59:01 am
Content-Length: 1455
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la goran. cusku di'e

> All IMHO: I think the term "abstraction" gives a big clue as to what
> events are. I don't view an event as an event-as-the-English-speaking-
> people-understand-it, but as an *abstraction* of an event. In-mind
> entity. When I hear "nu da de cinba" I understand it to mean the image I
> get when I visualise da cinbing de. So, {3 nu cinba} is image of 3
> cinbings, like, when my mother kisses my grandma, grandpa and uncle, or
> when I kiss my stepbrother and stepmother, and she kisses me back but he
> doesn't for he is still in the age when he thinks of such things in the
> general category designated by "Ugh!" or "Yuck!", or the image of me
> giving a friend a birthday kiss for the future three years, even if she
> moves away in the meantime. The lost kisses are still events IMHO,
> although unrealised. I know this is a load of ramblings, but I don't
> know how to write it better. I don't even think about putting it in
> lojban.

What you have there is not "nu" abstraction, but "si'o" abstraction: an
image or idea x1 in the mind of x2.  But you are right to say that "nu"
abstracts an event rather than being the event, although I use "being the
event" elliptically.

Perhaps what I have been trying to say to And is that "le nu...kei cu ka'e
fasnu" is true, but "le nu...kei cu ca'a fasnu" can be false.

--
John Cowan                                      cowan@ccil.org
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.