Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: Duration questions

[Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>]

2010/3/29 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>
>
> On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 2:44 PM, Michael Turniansky
> <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 7:24 PM, tijlan <jbotijlan@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Why would {ze'a lo cabdei} not mean "a time interval which is medium
> >> relative to the length of today", referring to about 12 hours, instead
> >> of "with today (24 hours) as the whole interval, the length of which I
> >> consider medium/unspecified"? Then we could just use {ze'e} in asking
> >> "To what does the whole interval of your having been living in this
> >> house amount?" If the answer is {lo cabdei}, the modal remains to be
> >> {ze'e} independent of the speakers' measurement.
> >
> >  Take heart.  That's exactly how I use ze'a and its kin.  Although I
> > have no idea why your message took so long to get in my inbox...
>
> I also got this post only when Robin moved the list. I was going to
> respond but then I forgot. Three reasons:
>
> Reason one: parallelism with zi/za/zu. If you accept that ZI tags the
> full time displacement magnitude, it is only natural for ZEhA to tag
> the full duration magnitude. Similarly for VA and VEhA. There is no
> "total displacement" equivalent to ze'e/ve'e in ZI/VA. (This reason
> does not apply to those who don't use ZI/VA to tag displacement
> magnitudes.)'

  Which of course I don't
>
> Reason two: consistency with the rest of the tags. "ze'u broda" says
> that broda takes a long time. "broda ze'u ko'a" should say the same
> thing, with more precision as to what a "long time" is, it should not
> shift to meaning that broda takes the best part of some interval,
> perhaps not a long time at all if the interval in question happens to
> be a short interval.
>

  You and I have different ideas about what a "consistency" would
entail.  "pu ko'a broda" isn't a "more precise version" of 'pu broda'
(although it CAN be).  For example... mi pu klama le zarci -- I went
to the store before this point.  mi pu lo bavlamdei cu klama le zarci
-- I am going to the store store before tomorrow.  I haven't specified
the time period more precisely, in fact, I have possibly completely
shifted it from the past to the future.  A tagged sumti makes the
tense relative to the sumti, rather than to now.  Using "ze'u lo
dunda" to mean "a long tim relative to the winter (i.e. most of the
winter)" would continue that, making it consistent with all the other
tense-tagged sumti.


> Reason three: it is easy to get the fractional meaning by other means:
> "ze'a pi so'u ko'a", "ze'a pi so'i ko'a", "ze'a pi so'a ko'a", etc.

    Thats a non-reason. a) I disagree that's "easy".  It's two more
words, for an already-wordy language b) ability to do something in
more than one way doesn't mean that both ways shouldn't be available.
           --gejyspa
(Off for the next two days due to Passover, so don't expect any
replies to any replies to this any time soon)

-- 
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.