[lojban-beginners] Re: grammar terms

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

On 6/25/08, Vid Sintef <picos.picos@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.

But then TAhE and ZAhO would be tenses too. For me the important
distinction is that ZEhA/VEhA/TAhE/ZAhO are properties of the described
event itself, no matter when/where it happens, whereas PU/ZI/FAhA/VA are
about locating the event somewhere/somewhen.

Another way of looking at it: If you consider the same situation as
described by different speakers, each of them located at different times
and places, they will all use the same ZEhA/VEhA/TAhE/ZAhO, but each
one will use a different PU/ZI/FAhA/VA tense, depending on where the
event is located with respect to them.

> > {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.

Personally, I would rather they were all in the same selmaho, as there
is no reason really for them to all have slightly different syntax. Obviously
one can establish different semantic groups for different purposes.

{cu'e} itself is not very useful, because it is so general that
it's impossible to know what it is asking about. It's more likely
that one would ask {ca ma}, {bu'u ma}, {ze'a ma}, etc. depending
on what one wants to know.

> 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.

Yes, especially the so called "irrealis" ones.

> > 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".

Well, lujvo are not definitions, so {cnima'o} could be used for a class
of words many of which relate to emotions, even if not all of them
(probably not even most of them) do. But if we can come up with a
more descriptive lujvo, all the better.

mu'o mi'e xorxes