From - Wed Feb 14 12:54:35 1996 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 FAA15646 for ; Wed, 14 Feb 1996 05:25:19 -0500 Message-Id: <199602141025.FAA15646@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 9CB32478 ; Wed, 14 Feb 1996 4:51:48 -0500 Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 04:50:05 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: sera'aku GEN: almost-PROPOSAL: intervals To: topic@STUDENT.MATH.HR Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu Status: O X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 995 >Are you aware that just that little difference made you throw away all of course >of the nifty imaginary journeys devices (not counting the aspectuals >(?))? Why bother with PU at all, if you can do it with >purci/balvi/cabna? Why bother with ZEhA, if you can do it with NAhE >clani temci? Why have mo'i FAhA? There is always muvdu be lo >bersa/trixe... In general, as in tense structures in the natlangs, the little tense particles in teh language are quite vague (fuzzy?), and you need to go to some kind of phrase in order to get specific. All those nifty devices were intended to correspond to the particles, often embedded in morphology within words (declensions/conjugations) or prepositions of natlangs. Unlike natlangs, we have fi'o to add an indefinite number of new "prepositions" intot he language, and we have a recursive language which alllows both garbage and convenient if conventional expansions of things that in natlangs are very sparse. lojbab