Re: [lojban] Beyond Whorf: "things," "qualities," and the origin of nouns and adjectives

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

On Wed, 2 Aug 2000, Pierre Abbat wrote:

> What's not clear to me is this: How do you say "that water bottle over there"
> when the bottle is empty now, and whenever it has water in it, it's here?

You say "le vu djacu botpi", where the implicit potentiality is "can and has"
rather than "actually is".  Only if the supposed water bottle neither
has nor ever could contain anything will I deny that it's a "botpi",
and even then, the non-veridicality of "le" saves you.

-- 
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
C'est la` pourtant que se livre le sens du dire, de ce que, s'y conjuguant
le nyania qui bruit des sexes en compagnie, il supplee a ce qu'entre eux,
de rapport nyait pas.               -- Jacques Lacan, "L'Etourdit"