Re: tense tenseness

["Jorge J. Llambías" <jorge@intermedia.com.ar>]

>From: "michael helsem" <graywyvern@hotmail.com>
>
>I have been reading with interest the debate on "stacking" 
>complex tense cmavo. I like journeying-imaginarily as much 
>as anyone, but i wonder if it is even necessary to do this 
>at all. (I'm trying to write using only "aspects" as much 
>as possible, as a stylistic exercize--BTW, when English 
>stacks them ["have had", "was going to" & the like], that's 
>usually what we're trying to express, not the future of a 
>past or such...) 

This is exactly right. I have never yet found an occasion 
where I needed to combine more than one {pu, ca, ba} 
(and usually not even one of them is needed).

Combining aspects, on the other hand, does yield 
interesting things, like {co'aco'u}, "the beginning of the 
end", or {ba'oco'a}, "having already started", {pu'omo'u},
"on the verge of being completed", etc.

>Why not put some of this information 
>somewhere else--a BAU, or on one of the gismu? Is there 
>anything you want to SAY with the conventions suggested 
>either by Jorge or Lojbab? 

I think it's mostly a theoretical discussion of principle, 
it probably doesn't affect any actual usage. But I don't like
it when inconsistent conventions are introduced in 
Lojban, because internal consistency is one of its strong 
points. 

>Is the thought in SwiftRain's 
>poem so very hard to express?

As it turned out, what he meant would best be translated
with a logical connective. Neither interpretation of 
multiple tenses was what he wanted. 

co'o mi'e xorxes