Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: Duration questions

[Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>]

2010/4/1 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> 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

(even there, he starts the story with "puzuki".  :-)  But yes, I take
your point, that you are talking about the implicit progression of
storytime.  I actually had that in mind as well.  My fault was in the
imprecise use of the English.  When I said, "this point", that also
was meant to include the meaning of "at this point in the story" if we
are talking in the context of "storytime")

>
> 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.

  We have no disagreement here.  But as I demonstrated that whole
"relative to....somthing explicitly mentioned in the bridi itself"
DOES/CAN take the time period to a completely new reference point.
"pu" can mean "before a a billion years in the future from now",
"before Columbus sailed to North America" or "before I sit down to
eat".  It no longer just means "before".  It means "before X" ....
>
> 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.
>

  No, I'm shifting the meaning from "a going that last long as goings
go" to "a going that lasts long as ko'a goes" analagously  paralleling
the way "pu klama" shifts to "pu ko'a"   Long for "le dunra", "the
particular winter", is isomorphic with "the 66th-99th percentiles of
all winter length samples drawn from a population of exactly one
particular winter".  (Which of course, you will say, from a statistics
point  of view is exactly the same as the length of that winter.
Because the the "bell curve" here is a single point, one winters
length, so the percentile you are looking at (ze'i, ze'a, or ze'u) is
all the same.  But I'm assuming that there is another unspoken of
winter that has 0 length, so now my population draws in the upper
third (ze'u) will in fact average  66%-99% of the particular winter)


> 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.
>
   And here again, we don't disagree.  tcita sumti provide the
reference point for understanding the main bridi.

>> (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.

  Fair enough.  Actually, I would think of it as a tag on you
(although we'd unfortunately have to momentarily and uglily selbriize
you, because we have no other convenient way to tensify KOhA--  "lo vu
me do")  But I hope you got my point despite the clumsiness of my
chosen example.

      --gejyspa

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