Message-Id: <199602140614.IAA04375@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Wed, 14 Feb 1996 01:13:32 -0500
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      Re: sera'aku GEN: almost-PROPOSAL: intervals
To:         topic@STUDENT.MATH.HR
Cc:         lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu
Content-Length: 2001
Lines: 46

>> > >mi klama la glazgov. puza lo nanca belipimu
>>
>> I agree with this usage.  It also allows things like:

I still read this as  a medium time before some 6 month period.  I am sorry,
but that is the way I learned the language, and this proposal changes it
significantly.  co'a lo puzi nanca belipimu does work for me as I presume
the above works for others, and probably means the same thing fo us, if
I could be sure I understood what the suggestion above meant - which I
cannot because the crosstalk from my understanding of it is interfering.

>>     mi klama la glazgov. zalo nanca belipimu pulenu xabju la belfast.
>>     I went to Glasgow six months before I lived in Belfast.

This definitely doesn;t work, since there is nothing that ties the 6 month
period to the time you lived in Belfast.  Maybe with a beipulenu????

My try would be
mi klama la glazgov. co'a lo nanca belipimu poi prulamji lenu xabju la belfast.

If I see any headache in all this, it is the need to specify/make clear that
the interval being defined is lamji the space-time reference, and I vaguely
suspect that there is some other brivla that exists that makes it unambiguous
that we have an interval with teh space-time reference (or some other
specified point) as an endpoint/anchor.  This inability to anchor intervals
is what I have found clumsy in the tense system far more that the difficulty
in specifiying the exact length of the interval.  Indeed, if we could anchor
an interval solidly, then the interval itself could be the local space-time
reference, and the problem would go away, because "pu [anchored interval]
would mean before-the -interavl, and pu'o co'a would mean just before/at the
beginning of that interval.

At which point I can go back to

>> > >mi klama la glazgov. puza lo nanca belipimu

and say that

>> > >mi klama la glazgov. pu'o lo nanca belipimu prulamji

is I think workable to me, if we accept that prulamji does the anchoring.
(maybe le instead of lo)

Anyone buying???

lojbab