[lojban-beginners] Re: grammar terms

["Vid Sintef" <picos.picos@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 4:16 PM, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Can tense (FAhA, VEhA, ZEhA, VIhA, VA, ZI, PU, ...) & aspect (ZAhO,
>> TAhE) & modal (BAI) be said to be the main categories of sumtcita?
>
> If tense specifies the when (and by extension the where) of an event,
> then VEhA, ZEhA and VIhA don't really belong in "tense". They are more
> like aspect in that they specify properties of the event independently of
> when/where it takes place.

I rather find the word "tense" to be implying a "relation" between
some kind of base points (a thing is "tensed" by other things), which
I think justifies Wikipedia's definition that grammatical tense is
also about "duration", a temporal relation between a beginning point
and an ending point. In this respect, VEhA and ZEhA have the same mode
of specification with FAhA/VA/ZI/PU.

I included VIhA with tense because it does come to specify the where
of an event if dimensionality means the sort of ground "where" a
phenomenon occurs (e.g. {vi'a} can specify the where of the colors of
a two-dimensional photograph).

> {nau} could also belong in "tense", but the
> other member of CUhE is more general.

I tend to question the functionality of {cu'e} as long as I attempt to
distinguish tense from modal or aspect. But maybe the distinction
itself is not really so much important in Lojban. At least I would
like to see some systematic grouping of these sumtcita selma'os.

> I imagine that "modal" was first used for CAhA, not for BAI. That corresponds
> better to what "modality" means in linguistics. BAIs have nothing to do
> with modality. At some point someone must have misused "modal" to refer
> to BAIs and somehow it stuck.

I'm also interested in the Wikipedia article ("Linguistic modality")
discussing "propositional attitudes" as an element of modality, which
may allow some of the Lojban attitudinals to be called "modals" as
well.

>> Does the word "cnima'o" mean the attitudinals in general (UI1, UI2,
>> UI3, ...) or just UI1?
>
> According to jbovlaste, attitudinals in general. UI1 contains several
> indicators that are not about emotions, so it doesn't really make a
> natural "cinmo" class.

But if some UIs are not about emotions, "cnima'o" wouldn't cover
attitudinals in general. Clearly UI2 and UI3 are not about emotions.
If attitude/attitudinal, not emotion, is the generic idea of the UI
series, we need some alternative to "cnima'o".

mu'o mi'e tijlan