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I almost caught the train



(Hah! Bqrain w9ork OK this morning!  fingers not so good)

Putting xorxes, pi,er and & together with a little Grice, I think the tunnel
opens up.
I think the {snada/fliba} for catch/miss the (buried) train is Lojban at its
best; the {ce'a} is almost certainly recoverable as "get on and ride," as
soon as we figure how to say that.  And the {po'u je ca'anai} before the
inapplicable one now gives the precarious achievement of the opposite.  But
then we can bring in Grice and note that mentioning the inchoative aspect of
an event is almost a gurantee that it does NOT happen "I was on the verge
of..." pretty much assures that I don't ..., unless the aspect is mentioned
to coordinate with some else "when Jessica arrived."  And even then, the
coordinated event is very often one that prevents inchoation from coming to
initiation -- at that time at least. Sooooo. we can probably drop the {je
ca'a nai} at least in conversation, if not in scholarly prose (satci bangu?)
I just missed the train =  almost caught the train =  mi po'u snada ta'u le
trene
I just barely caugt the train = almost missed the train = mi po'u fliba ta'u
le trene.

to the side: "almost 100" is {so'a panono};  although {so'a} isn't marked as
defaulting to "all," it presumably works like all those other guys.
"only" we've been around on so many times I can't remember all the readings
for it, but {po'o} doesn't fit (and I seem to recall that I never liked it
anyhow): the present cases seems to amount to something like "I am
surprised/relieved that it is so little as" - a complex UI.
I have no suggestion for "barely over 100" off the top of mu head.