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 5:06 PM, Michael Turniansky
> <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2010/3/29 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>

>>> 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).
>
> Well, let's put it this way. If someone says "pu broda", and you are
> not quite sure what reference point they are taking "pu" from, you can
> always ask for more precision with "pu ma broda".
>
>>  For example... mi pu klama le zarci -- I went
>> to the store before this point.
>
> Assuming you already know, or can figure out, that the reference point
> is "this point", "now".

By definition, it always is, unless a previous "ki" has made it something else.

>
>> 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.
>
> Of course. But you could have used "mi pu klama le zarci" to mean that
> too, if "lo bavlamdei" had been established as the reference point or
> was the obvious reference point from the context.
>

  I agree that it can if a ki operator had been used, but absent that,
I doubt very highly that it could mean anything else than in the past
of now.

>> 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.
>
> (That's "dunra", BTW)

  Thanks, I was literally co'a cliva, so I wasn't carfeul about
proofreading.  Yeah, not during the giver....

>"Most of the winter" can count as a very short
> duration, depending on what it is a duration for. There is nothing in
> "for a large fraction of winter" that says that that time interval is
> a long time for doing whatever the main selbri is.

  Absolutely right.  And there is absolutely no relation between the
selbri tcita (if any) and sumti tcita in the same sentence.  Just as I
can say "mi pu klama le zarci ba la pavdei" ("I went
in-the-past-relative-to-now to the store
in-the-future-relative-to-Monday") I can say "lo mlatu pe mi cu pu
ze'i jmive ze'u le dunra"  "My cat lived a short time during a good
portion of the winter of the winter."  It was short relative to a
cat's act of living, but long compared to winter.   And the sentence
would still refer to the exact same span of life in the event that  I
elided either "ze'i" or "ze'u le dunra".  To assert  that I should be
able eliminate just "le dunra" and the sentence still mean the same
thing is just as bizarre as saying I should be able to eliminate "la
pavdei" in the first sentence.  (The same is true of all spatial
tenses, too, of course.  I can be in this room, next to my computer on
my chair far-away chatting to you.  The first three would be tcita
sumti, and the last would be a selbri tcita.)

         --gejyspa

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