Re: [lojban-beginners] "Towards the end of..."

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

2010/10/11 Krzysztof Sobolewski <jezuch@interia.pl>:
> Say I want to add a sumtcita that amounts to "towards the end of <some event>". Am I imagining this journey correctly as {co'u pu zi lo nu broda}?

Two issues:

(1) "co'u pu zi" is not a valid compound tense with the current
grammar, so what you have is two terms:  "co'u ku" and  "pu zi lo nu
broda".

That first issue should go away if this proposal is accepted:
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Internal+grammar+of+tags

(2) This is the more interesting issue for me. "co'u" to me always
indicates the end of the event in the matrix clause, not the end of
the subordinate clause event inside the tagged sumti. So:

      mi co'u tcidu
      "I finish reading."

      mi tcidu co'u ko'a
      "I read until ko'a."
      "I finish reading at ko'a."

This, however, is a contentious issue, and some people will interpret
"mi tcidu co'u ko'a" as "I read when ko'a is finishing". That makes
little sense to me, because all the other non-ZAhO tags have the same
effect on the matrix clause whether they are used directly on the
selbri or with a tagged sumti. Making an exception for ZAhO doesn't
seem reasonable. So to me "co'u ko'a" is "ending at ko'a", not "at the
end of ko'a". What is at its end is the reading, not ko'a.

So to get your meaning I would say:

      ca lo nu pu'o co'u broda
      "As broda is about to end"

That one should work for everyone, because "pu'o co'u" is a valid
compound tense and the meaning as selbri tcita is not in dispute.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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