[lojban-beginners] Re: Tenses and Event Contours

[volcpitar <apeal@comcast.net>]

Thanks for the replies everyone.  I am not sure how folks managed to
quote parts of the thread, so I will use ||

remod,


||> It's not {mimoi} (it's not even legal) that is "mine" but is
{memimoi}.
> I understand it piecewise:
>
> {memi} is a selbri meaning { x1 is among those related to me in some aspect }
>
> and so
>
> {memi moi} is {x1 is the n.th (i.e. a generic one) among those related to me}
>
> which is one of the meaning of "mine".||


Are you saying that {memi} and {moi} are each a selbri and that
together they make a tanru?  That would be cool in a twisted {zo'o
a'u} sort of way

David,

Thanks for you extensive reply.


||> ni'o coi rodo i mi cnino mrilu i ku'i mi cire'u ca troci co
vlicu'u fo

You're a new mailer? Interesting (not incorrect, just surprising)
choice of
words. ||


I was trying to say something like:"This is my first time posting
here," but thought that was too based on thinking in English.  I was
going for more of the feeling of "I am a new poster unfamiliar to you
all", but didn't want to translate that literally.  Is {mrilu} not a
good word for "post" or was the tanru too vague?


||{mi cire'u ca troci co vlicu'u} probably doesn't mean what you think
it
means.

General lujvo convention is that a XXX YYY is a XXX-ish type of YYY --
so
generally, a vlicu'u 's x1 should -- not must, though, be a {lo
cuntu}. In
short, you are saying that, for the third time, you are a attempt-ish
powerful affair ;). ||


Alas, I see that I actually need to think before I post.  I meant to
write {vlisku} rather than {vlicu'u}.  I was trying to say:  "This is
my third time trying to to learn Lojban."


||Also, if you are learning, I recommend sticking to the basics -- co
can be
useful, but for a start it's better to use the conventional ordering.
You did use co correctly, though. I just question why you would use
it. )||


How should I reorder {ca troci co vlisku fo lo lojbo}?  Should I
preferably say {ca vlisku be fo lo lojbo troci}?


||Other corrections:
"jbobau" -- referring to Lojbanic language rather than just 'something
Lojbanic' (for example, arguably you and I are {lo lojbo} -- something
lojbanic, to some degree) ||


I assumed that {lo lojbo} would be more appropriate as the x4 of
{cusku}.  I also wanted to include a little more than the language.
Given my change from {vlicu'u} to {vlisku}, is that still correct?


||"cilre" -- well, I expect you would have used this rather than
vlicu'u if
you had better grasp of gismu vocab. I suggest trying jbofacki
(offline
tool) or vlasisku (online tool) for looking up words. It takes a bit
of
thought to work out the subtleties in the definition of each gismu.
Maybe
you didn't feel it was appropriate here? ||


I know a little of a number of languages, and {cilre fi lo bangu} did
not seem right to me.  I do not want just to learn things about
Lojban, but want to learn how to use it.  Maybe I should have tried
something like {se xamgu se bangu}; however, what came to mind was the
Spanish word "dominar," which is frequently used to talk about having
fluency in a language.  This lead me to think that what I wanted was
"mastery in expressing myself in Lojban," i.e., {vlipa cusku} or
{vlisku}.  Maybe I should have said: {mi ca troci lo nu vlisku fo lo
lojbo}, but this seemed more specific than I wanted, since I did not
have any particular event or events in mind.

||You know, you can insert whitespace where-ever you want. Lojban is
very
amenable to artistic or poetic text layouts.
I like to recursively indent arguments, ala Python indenting,
if I'm not sure about whether I'm speaking correctly. This also tends
to
make it much easier to read. ||

Thanks for that clarification.  I was trying to be solicitous of
readers, but was unsure how far to go and evidently failed {vau
a'onaicu'e}. I am unfamiliary with Python indenting, but I think I
know get the idea.


||> lo lojbo i a'isai iiru'ero'e mi troci co cusku lo pamoi pagbu

***
'[effort] [weak conscious fear] express-ish try (some first part)'
This is a problem. You have an object in troci x2, but troci x2 is an
abstraction. This is the same problem as with {mi djica lo plise} --
you
don't desire an apple, you desire to possess an apple, or eat an
apple...
This is known as sumti raising. You need to put an abstraction in x2,
then
you will not be sumti-raising -- and will make sense, besides. ||


I omited some of my Lojban above.  Should I have put {sei li'o} at the
end to indicate this?

As for {troci}, I thought using {co} precludes the possibility of
expressing any more arguments of the main selbri it follows.  In other
words, in the way I expressed it, I thought that {lo pamoi pagbe} was
the x2 of {cusku}, not {troci}.  Am I wrong about this?


||{pu'o troci
    le nu cusku
            la'e le pamoi pagbu ku
            bau lo jbobau kei ku
    tezu'e lo zu'o mi cilre fu lo nu zenbai}

(I am considering the x1 of troci to be implicitly {mi}, from context.
Also,
I translated 'better' as 'more effective/compelling'. And, I included
KU
terminators for clarity's sake, though none of them are *required* in
this
context.) ||

I understand this and {cilre fu lo nu zenbai} seems an even better
thought than I had; however, what I intended to say is that the
process of my learning would be improved, rather than using the
language would better compel me to learn.  How should I say "learn
better," if {cilre zenba} is not right?  Also, why {zu'o} instead of
{pu'u}?  I was thinking more of a learning process than a learning
activity.


||{jai ta'i cmene} looks like gibberish, but I admit I find {jai} a
bit
difficult to think about. ||


I based this on

10.10)  le jai gau rinka
        be le nu do morsi
    that-which-is agent-in causing
        (the event-of your death)

in the Lojban Reference Grammar, among other places.  I thought {lo
jai ta'i cmene} would mean "the method used for naming something
else"  or "how to name something."


||kampytugni i ta'onai ja'ebo mi na crici lo du'u lo ni mi djuno fi lo

"BTW, [question] some [new information] by unspecified method, named-
thing"
ah, something, which by some method is named.
Good Lojban!
Sit, Lojban!
Stay!
;)

***
wait, reading that all, you are talking about a
[by-unspecified-method] named-ish [ended]common-ish-side-being-agreed-
with.

Reading the English text doesn't help. I'll leave comprehending this
particular cizbri to someone else. ||


I was trying to say "...consensus?  But, going back to the point, as a
result of my reading, I realized that.."  Basically I assumed that
{ja'ebo} would link up with bridi governed by {tcidu}.


||u'isai xu do me la velosiraptr

.i uacu'i lu vofli cipni tarci li'u
.i ma smuni lu cipni tarci li'u

(hmm, is 'the flying bird star' an existing name of a real star?
Either way,
what a 'bird-ish star' might look like is an interesting puzzle.) ||

i uero'e i mi na me la veloxiraptr i zo'o o'onaicu'e i ku'i mi me la
atkuila vau zo'o oa

i lo nu mi jdice lo nu mi se cmene lu volcpitar li'u cu se krinu lo nu
lo saske certu be lo za'i zgana lo tarci cu te cmene pa lo tarci zoi
gli altair gli

i ti'e lo nu te cmene zoi gli altair gli se jicmu lo xrabo jufra poi
smuni lu atkuila poi vofli li'u i ji'a lo xrabo je lo muslo cu pu
vajni fi lo saske be lo tadni be lo so'i tarci be'o je lo nu te cmene

i da poi lo drata tarci cu cmene la cipni poi farlu i lo bi'unai re
tarci jo'u la rebla be le cipni cu cmima la'e la crisa cibjgatai

i za'a lo se go'i je lu'a la cipni poi vofli cu ka'e ca se viska ca lo
nicte ga'u lo te crisa be mi zdane

This is what I tried to say, in English:

Isn't it obvious?  I am certainly not a velociropter, but rather a
proud eagle.:)  I decided to name myself Flying Bird Star because
astronomers call one of the stars "Altair."  The call it that based on
an Arabic phrase that meant "flying eagle."  Arabic and Islamic
culture used to be important for studying the stars and for naming
them.  There is another star called the Falling Bird [Vega, or the
Falling one] and those two stars together with the Bird's Tail [Deneb,
or the tail] form the Summer Triangle.  The Summer Triangle and Altair
can be seen right now during the night over my house, since it is
summer where I am.


Pierre,

Thanks for your reply.


||"le dei" followed by something other than a selbri is ungrammatical.
You mean
just "dei". ||


Yes, I should have known that.


||lo jefydetri lo rarbau zo'u lo porto cu frica lo potrgalego||


Wow, I didn't know that. I actually speak some Brazilian Portuguese,
some Arabic, and some Chinese.  All three use mostly numbers to refer
to the days of the week, but all use slightly different systems.
Lord's day, day-2, day-3, day-4, day-5, day-6, Sabbath; Day-1, day-2,
day-3, day-4, day-5, Gathering, Sabbath; heaven day, day-1, day-2,
day-3, day-4, day-5, day-6.


||.i lo jefydetri lo lojbo zo'u e'u ko
cilre ro ciste gi'e pilno lo se nelci ||


ija pe'u mi finti lo cnino ciste vau zo'o

Oo, how about I create my own then?:)


Xorxes,

Thank you for your reply as well.


||ZAhOs are aspects, not tenses, so they are not really about "when".
In
the absence of an explicit tense marker or any contextual indication
to the contrary, a bridi will normally be taken to be about the
present, so:

[nau] ba'o carvi = [here and now] it has rained
[nau] pu'o carvi = [here and now] it is going to rain

Now the "ca'o carvi" stage, the "it is raining", could be anytime
before/after the present, respectively. But just as in English you are
unlikely to say "it has rained" or "it is going to rain" if you don't
see signs that it has rained or that it is going to rain, or in some
other way the raining is relevant to the time being talked about (in
this case the present). So in practice, just from a relevance point of
view, it is more likely that you wil be describing the
aftermath/beforemath of a recent or proximate event. ||


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.

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.

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.  For
instance, what would this mean:  {mi nupre lo nu mi ba'o lo cabdei
cusku fo lo po'o lojbo}?  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.  Similar, what does this mean: {lo danlu ba mrobi'o pu'o
lo nu lo fagri klama}?  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)?  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!"

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.  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.

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