Re: [lojban] Re: Looking down

["Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>]

At 04:57 AM 07/15/2001 -0700, Nick Nicholas wrote:
> And correctly points out that what is spoken of in English as moving
> down is a gaze, not an eyeball; but I shudder to think what the Lojban for
> "gaze" is, so that won't help either.

nu farcta

and it is the selfarcta (a direction) that is moving down

> All well and good. But Jorge countersuggests {fa'a ni'a}. Will *that* work?
> The Book only says {fa'a} is not ego-centric --- that it involves direction
> towards some point other than the speaker. But does that mean it expresses
> the directedness of an event, or is it still describing the imaginary event
> from that "point other than the speaker" to the bridi event?

I think the former.

> Concretely, what do the following mean?
>
> do fa'a bacru:
>     You speak towards something
I vote for this one though I wouldn't use it
>     You speak, while situated towards something else
>     Meaningless (the "some other point" is unspecified")
>
> do fa'a ni'a bacru:
>     You speak downwards
do fa'a le cnita ku bacru
>     You speak, while situated below something else (not the speaker)
That would be "do ni'a bacru"
>     You speak, while situated somewhere towards below me
That would be the default context-free interpretation of the latter.

fa'ani'a is vague since we don't have a theory for multiple FAhAs.  It 
means "in some specific direction and then downward" by the imaginary 
journey metaphor

> If Jorge is right --- which I'd like for him to be, because that completes
> a void in Lojban --- it does nonetheless mean that {fa'a} and {to'o} are
> rather different to the other FAhA cmavo in meaning, because they do *not*
> describe an imaginary journey. Presumably the same is not true for {zo'i}
> and {ze'o}. If this is the case, it isn't made clear in the Book, and
> should be made clear somewhere.

Anything not clear in the book may be made clear in the dictionary or 
textbook when written, but only in response to clear usage supporting the 
form.  The intent for such semantic issues is to "let usage decide".

lojbab
--
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org