terse tenses

["John E. Clifford" <pcliffje@CRL.COM>]

While I sympathize with the desire to get things in short in Lojban as in
English, I don't think it is going to happen all the time.  In
particular, djer's latest shot as "ago" does not quite work.  It is
grammatical but not the grammar wanted -- as the parsings provided show.
The phrase _zu'a_vei_ci_mitre_, for example, is not a tense but a
modifier on the first sumti, _le_nanmu_, in this case.  This
interpetation is forced by the _cu_ after the phrase, forcing it into the
first sumti scope.  My aging parser (and dubious 286 machine) does not accept
this without the _cu_, as a tense.  The same applies to the other examples.
BTW, will _vei_ci_mitre_ really mean "three meters away" or does it still
mean "away from three meter-long things"?
pc >|83