[lojban-beginners] Re: sequence of tenses?

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 6/2/07, Vid Sintef <picos.picos@gmail.com> wrote:
> { mi ba'o cusku lesedu'u mi pu jinvi ledu'u ma kau bebna }
> is the answer for Lojban For Beginners Chapter 15 Exercise 1.3, "I've said
> who I thought was a fool."
> Is the {pu } in { mi pu jinvi } reflecting some kind of sequence of tenses
> as the "thought" in "I thought" is in accordance with "I've said" (in which
> case "I"'s thinking of "who" as "a fool" may either be continuing or have
> stopped)? Or is it simply implying { mi pu jinvi gi'enai ca jinvi ledu'u
> ...}?

All {pu} does there is say that the opinion was held at some point
before some other unspecified reference point. The three most obvious
reference points available without more context are: (1) the time of
the current utterance, (2) the unstated time of the reported
{ba'o cusku}, and (3) the unstated time of the not even mentioned but
implied {ca'o cusku}.

The translator made the assumption that {ba'o cusku} has present
tense ("I've said" rather than "I had said" or "I will have said"),
so (1) and (2) turn out to be the same time, and that's probably
the best bet, so the time of the opinion would agree with the time
of the {ca'o cusku}, which is in the past of the time of (1) and (2).
The speaker doesn't say anything about whether they still think
the person they said they thought was a fool is a fool or not.

Notice that the tense of {bebna} is also not provided, so there
are even more theoretical possibilities:

"I had/have/will have said who I thought was/is/will/would be a fool"

and I probably left some out.

{pu} is probably just malglico though, it doesn't really add much
there, I think.

mu'o mi'e xorxes