[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: Tenses and Event Contours
On Sun, Aug 21, 2011 at 8:51 PM, volcpitar <apeal@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> I take it that you are mixing meaning and pragmatics, and I somewhat
> understand. I am having some difficulty, however, since my sense of
> English (or Spanish for that matter) is a little different from what
> you describe. For me, the English present perfect tense (or the
> equivalent in Spanish or Chinese) refer to things that have relevancy
> to the presence, but which may have occurred at any indefinite time in
> the past. If I say: "I have been to Paris," there is no sense of
> aftermath, but rather merely that the past event has some bearing on
> present circumstances. Scientist say that the entire earth has been
> covered in snow and ice, and yet they are referring to a time hundreds
> of millions of years ago.
Which is recent by Earth's age standards. "Relevance" is exactly
right. More recent is usually more likely to be relevant, but there's
no indication in "ba'o" about any time magnitude. That's done with
zi/za/zu.
> From the description of {pu'o}, I first took it to mean "have yet to,"
> "have not yet," "be bound to" and was surprised to see the meaning of
> "going to." "I have yet to" and "I am going to" seem both to be
> covered by the explanations of {pu'o}, but their pragmatics are almost
> opposite in character.
"have yet to" has no indication of ever going to. In my reading of
"[ca] pu'o" there's an indication that things are already in motion
for the event to happen (which is not to say that it will end up
actually happening).
> If {pu'o} and {ba'o} pragmatically imply some lead up to an event and
> its aftermath, respectively, this seems quite different from the
> indefinite period before or after the event. This difference seems
> more important when these words are used as sumti tcita.
I never use them as sumti tcita. Their official definition is contrary
to the definition of all other tags, so in order to avoid confusion I
just don't use them there.
> For
> instance, what would this mean: {mi nupre lo nu mi ba'o lo cabdei
> cusku fo lo po'o lojbo}?
In my reading: "I promise to have said [something] today in Lojban only".
But to avoid confusion I would say instead: "mi nupre lo nu mi ba'o
cusku ca lo cabdei fo lo po'o lojbo".
With CLL's reading, I suppose it would mean "I promise to say
[something] in Lojban only when today is over".
> If {ba'o} refers only to the indefinite
> "aftermath" of today, then the content of my promise/threat is
> pragmatically limited in time. If {ba'o} refers to all time after
> today, them my promise/threat refers to forever, beginning as of the
> end of today.
For the "forever" promise I think maybe something like:
mi nupre lo nu co'a lo mo'u cabdei ro da poi mi cusku ke'a cu te bangu
mi lo lojbo
> Similar, what does this mean: {lo danlu ba mrobi'o pu'o
> lo nu lo fagri klama}?
(You need "cu" before "klama".)
With my reading: "Animals will be about to die when the fire comes."
> Does this imply the animals will die as the
> fire is about to arrive (implying a connection) or merely that they
> will die some time before it arrives (implying a lack of a
> connection)?
I would say there have to be signs that the fire will come. But the
way I would say it is "lo danlu ba mrobi'o ca lo nu lo fagri pu'o
klama".
> Evacuating before a hurricane is quite a different
> experience depending on whether you are doing it during the lead up or
> before it has come anywhere near. How would you say: "Get out before
> the hurricane comes!"
"ko cliva pu lo nu co'a tsali brife"
> I hope I am not coming across as difficult. I have studied a number
> of languages from different language families, many of which use
> aspect in important ways. I am trying not to impose any of those
> views on Lojban, however, I am sensitive to the fact that aspects can
> be slippery to work with.
I don't think we have enough usage yet to say what exactly will be all
the subtleties of Lojban aspects.
> Also, Lojban seems to have side-stepped the
> issue of lexical aspect, or aktionsart, and this makes it somewhat
> difficult to analyze using some analogies with expressions in natural
> languages.
Yes.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Lojban Beginners" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban-beginners+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban-beginners?hl=en.