From - Tue Jan 28 09:30:10 1997 Reply-To: "Jorge J. Llambias" Date: Tue Jan 28 09:30:10 1997 Sender: Lojban list From: "Jorge J. Llambias" Subject: Re: A question about space tenses X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-UIDL: ddae106cfd621db2d00d72f0a1e2d883 X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1394 Message-ID: Iain Alexander wrote: [...] > Perhaps, but it looks like we're stuck with using the gismu > {farna} for that. I don't know how stuck we are. There are two separate issues at stake: (1)- Whether fa'a means "oriented towards X" or "located towards X". (And similarly for to'o, oriented or located away from X.) (2)- Whether mo'i is to be used to show movement of the event as a whole or movement of some sumti of the relationship. As far as (1) goes, the baselined refgrammar isn't decisive. It has no examples using fa'a or to'o, and the short definitions it gives can be interpreted either way. The definition lojbab gave is also ambiguous, and though the explanation he gives obviously refers to the location definition, I think it would be worth going back to the original orientation one. (The origin of fa'a is from farna, clearly, and that is even in the refgrammar.) As for (2), I'm not overly concerned, since I dislike both possibilities. Making mo'i show the movement of one sumti is inconsistent with how the rest of the tenses work. Making it show the movement of the whole event (in an airplane, train, elevator, or whatever) is rather silly. It is not something that I would want to specially grammaticalize. So I am not likely to be using mo'i in any case. (The refgrammar in this case has examples for each of both interpretations.) Jorge