Message-ID: <472FEE2B.5030703@salkin.org>
Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 23:31:39 -0500
From: Steve Salkin <steve@salkin.org>
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To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: beginner questions
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Hi Jorge,

Thanks for your informative reply.

Jorge Llambías wrote:
> On 11/5/07, Steve Salkin <steve@salkin.org> wrote:
>> ni'o lei se morji be mi cu kalsa mutce
>> which seems to parse
>> <start paragraph>the mass of memories I recall are chaotic in aspect
>> extremeness.
> 
> That would have to be {kalsa lo ka mutce} instead of {kalsa mutce}.
> 
>> I would have thought it would work:
>> ni'o lei se morji be mi mutce kalse (are extreme in property disorder).
> 
> That would be {mutce lo ka kalsa}.
> 
> {kalsa mutce} is a shortened form of {mutce lo ka kalsa}, where {mutce}
> is the main selbri and {kalsa} the modifier.

Ah! I was sitting here explaining why the above was not clear to me when
the light shone through. Thanks.

> 
>> (2) Do people really find constructions that mix speaker's time and
>> sentence time to be fine in usage? For example, "mi puzuze'a gunka" from
>> LFB;
> 
> {pu zu} indicates the time when the working takes place, {ze'a} indicates
> the duration of the working. They are both "sentence times". {pu zu} may
> often be taken to be relative to the speaker's time, but it need not be. It
> just says "long before (some unspecified reference point)".
> 
>> would the usage "puzuku mi ze'a gunka" seem more awkward in Lojban?
> 
> That's also fine.
> 
>> While I don't find it so awkward to have the time and space both given
>> in the same spot, having two different kinds of time orientation given
>> together like that is still feeling very odd to me.
> 
> {ze'a} is for the duration of the event, {zu} is for its location in time,
> they are not different time orientations.

This one I think I can ascribe to the LFB chapter 6 description - "If we
want to situate the event in the main bridi relative to the here and
now, we can leave out the sumti (of ba and pu - SLS) and just use the
tense cmavo on its own. So if we want to say that Susan came to the bar
some time after right now, and not after Zhang's leaving, we can say:
{baku la suzyn. klama le barja}" It does say that this literally means
"after (something)" but it also uses all the paku/caku/baku forms for
translations to and from time-relative-to-speech relations.

In the general case (in other words, without additional context to
indicate otherwise), would you take the meaning to be understood to be
with respect to the current/speaker's time? If so, it still feels a bit
awkward to me, although I expect I can grow used to that.


Thanks again,

S-