From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:57:39 2010 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list Date: Tue Jan 28 09:30:16 1997 From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: A question about space tenses X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-UIDL: 4898f69f00fa2b29892bec28fd4eb3e6 X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1579 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Jan 28 09:30:16 1997 X-From-Space-Address: - Message-ID: >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 >--More-- >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.) The etymology is from farna indeed, with the presumed meaning "in the direction of" which seems locative, rather than "facing" which is orientative, I don;lt think we ever considered an orientative tense. We did something with BAI, I think to allow stating an orientation, but I cannot remember what it was. The main argument for locative interpretation is indeed that of the refgrammar, since the whole "Imaginary Journeys" metaphor is locative i in paradigm. >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.) In which case things are ambiguous. But I would presume that showing motion in a sumti would be done using "pe" or "ne" rather than with a tense on the bridi. lojbab