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Re: [lojban] space tenses


la pycyn cusku di'e


<<
> I have a problem with {vi} here, since I use it to mark distance
> magnitude rather than position, but since that is another
> discussion I will just change to another example. Let's
> say {re'o le birjanco}.
>>
Usually I can see some reason for your unlojban, but this one escapesme,
since we have perfectly good metrics and nothing else that does points.
Another time, maybe.


Au contraire! We have at least two ways to do points: {bu'u}
and {di'o}. {bu'u} was introduced explicitly as the space
equivalent of {ca}. On the other hand, VA are the only way to do
magnitude of displacements that I know of. Well, ok, there's
the termset contraption with {la'u} presented in the Book
(end of chapter 10), but that's ugly and unnecessary, since VA
are the natural choice for that:

    la frank sanli zu'a la djordj va lo mitre be li mu
    Frank stands left of George medium-distance of 5 meters.
    Frank stands five meters to the left of George.

    la frank zu'a sanli va lo mitre be li mu
    Frank stands five meters to the left.



As I said, temporal tenses are worse.  About the time my lst message went
out, I awoke seeing clearly that that message was confused, confusing and in large measure wrong. All the tenses place the event in the sentnece relative 
to the axis in the appropriate way.


Yes. In the case of the aspectuals it is not so much a placement
relative to an axis as a selection of the phase we're concentrating
on. But in any case it is a phase of the main event, not a phase
of an event within the tagged sumti.


The common (I trust xorxeson this) usage
of inchoative and perfective seems to put the axis relative to the event --
and the blurb lends itself readily to that interpretation.


I can't say how common that usage is. I don't think people use
it that much, and I discourage it as much as I can, but it has
been the official interpretation, and there are even examples
in the Book: {mi klama le zarci pu'o le nu mi citka} is
interpreted as {mi klama le zarci ca le nu mi pu'o citka}
instead of as {mi pu'o klama le zarci ca le nu mi citka}.
As you say, the blurb tends to force that interpretation,
but it is a weird usage if you analyze it carefully.


But it should not
be -- the fact that, relative to the event, the inchoative is past, does not 
mean that inchoative is a past kind of tense (nor mirrorly for the
perfective), but rather that it is a future one, since it is the axis to
event direction that counts always.  So, it is the axis which lies in the
event contour in question and so, as xorxes says, Nick has asked people to be building up to the work on 9/20 (and presumably actually doing it by 10/1 and 
finishing by ?).


Well, he did provide an English version, so probably nobody
was confused. He also used {ba'o} a couple of times with
the "in the aftermath of ..." sense rather than in the
"having been done by time ..." sense.


As usual, when xorxes isn't unlojbanic, he is right -- and
often when he at first seems unlojbanic as well.  [I have the distinct
feeling that I have been on the wrong side of this issue in the past but
can't find the cases at the moment;


The most intense discussions on this, as I remember, I had with
Lojbab, and they were before you joined the list, and also before
the Book was published. Obviously I did not manage to convince
him.


{za'o} as a sumti tcita should introduce
where/when one has actually gotten to, not what one has overshot.]


I use it to introduce the time when the overshooting is produced,
the point when the "natural end" of the event should have taken place.
For example: {ko'a zvati le purdi za'o le nu co'a carvi}, "he keeps
being in the garden as it begins to rain", i.e. a kind of
{za'o zvati}.

mu'o mi'e xorxes



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