RE: [jboske] xoi'a

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>]

Xod:
> On Sun, 6 Oct 2002, And Rosta wrote:
> 
> > Xod:
> > > Naturally, I find the fact that there are no natlang analogs to xoi'a
> > and
> > > xoi'e (especially with respect to a direct treatment of "linear" and
> > > "exponential" functions) a very Good Thing.
> >
> > But for something that needn't be expressed by a cmavo but could be
> > expressed by a lujvo instead, isn't the evidence of natlangs useful
> > in suggesting which concepts are needed often enough to warrant
> > being expressed by a cmavo?
> 
> Lojban has introduced the concept of the "grammatical orthogonality" of
> tense and statement; the tenses can be inserted into statements at will,
> without grammatically affecting the rest of the statement. And in a sense,
> conceptually, the idea of tense is a meta-comment on the statement and
> shouldn't really have impact its structure. If you can't appreciate the
> clean elegance here, I can't say much more than this, and several rounds
> of debates about it won't help anyone. But this is why I think these
> concepts really should be tenses and not (only) lujvo.

I would hate to be someone who can't appreciate clean elegance, but 
I think that a tense cmavo C as a sumti (tcita) or selbri tcita within
bridi B is equivalent to C(B): i.e. the tense is a predicate and the
bridi is its argument.

If I seem to you so blind that it seems almost pointless to make the
effort you explain your views again, I will sympathize, because I
feel the same from time to time (not with you in particular), but if
you do want to try to get me to see your point-of-view, I would be
interested.

--And.