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Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: Duration questions
On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 9:39 AM, Michael Turniansky
<mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/3/29 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
>> On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 5:06 PM, Michael Turniansky
>> <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> 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.
Not always: http://jbotcan.org/docs/cll/c10/s14.html
But even if "pu klama" always did mean "pu lo nau cabna cu klama", the
point remains valid: "pu", whether as selbri tcita or as sumti tcita
always indicates the placement in time of the event described by the
main selbri, relative to something else. That something can be a
default, a semi-default, something explicitly fixed previously, or
something explicitly mentioned in the bridi itself.
The convention you are using for ZEhA is different. You are shifting
the meaning of "ze'u klama" from "a going that lasts long as goings
go", to "ze'u ko'a klama", "a going that lasts for a large fraction of
ko'a", which need not be long at all as goings go.
>>"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.
You can with your convention, yes, which makes "short" a measure of
"jmive" and "long" a measure of the portion of winter.
I would say: "lo mlatu pe mi pu jmive ze'i pi so'i lo dunra".
> 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".
Yes, it's the "being long" or "being short" part that you are shifting
away from the selbri.
> 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.
Well, I think an event can be short in a sense and long in another
sense at the same time, since short and long can be highly subjective,
but that's a different point. My point is that tags, whether used as
selbri tcita or as sumti tcita, should always apply to the event
described by the main selbri.
> (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.)
I would say the last one should be a seltau, not a tcita at all, since
"far away chatting" is a type of chatting, not the distance of the
event of you and I chatting being far away from some reference point.
At least if the bridi you are thinking of is something like "mi tavla
do" or "mi'o casnu". It should be "mi danro tavla do" or "mi'o danro
casnu". And FAhAs can't really be used directly for your location
there either, unless you use them as modifiers of "mi". But your
example might work with "mi donta'a" as the bridi.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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