Re: [lojban] Far away

On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 9:01 AM, Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrote:
> cool. Excellent explanation. So the distinction between {vi} and {vu} then
> is not so much a reflection of actual distance but more so what the speaker
> feels about that distance. e.g. {mi zutse ne'a lo tricu vi lo mitre} tells
> us that the speaker feels like a meter a short distance from the tree while
> if I had said {vu lo mitre} we would be led to believe that the speaker
> feels that one meter is a very large distance from the tree.
> Is that a reasonable understanding?

Yes, in the new school understanding. Which is why I think new
school is *bleep*. If you specify a unit of measure, then your choice
of vi/va/vu becomes arbitrary and subjective, and adds not a wit of
objectivity to "lo mitre be li pa", but nonetheless, you HAVE to pick
one of them (unlike la'u, which is completely objective). So now you
have to think "hmmm...is it near? far? How do I feel about it today?
How will my listener feel?". On the other hand, if you really WANT to
communicate a feeling, rather than a specific number, old or new
school just use a selbri tense.

Keep in mind that in the "new school" {va} does not specify _medium_ distance, so if you don't feel particularly short or long, you can just use {va}.

> So at this point, does VI differ from TAG? I perpetually have trouble when
> talking about TAG-like constructs.
> {broda ba lo nu brode} = "broda occurs {ba (in the future of) } the event of
> brode"
> {broda vi lo brode} = "broda occurs {vi (short distance of) } the brode".
> What it is a short distance FROM is unspecified. For specifying origin
> we'd need to use a bu'u or some such I guess? Maybe as is the case with an
> un-specified TAG, the assumed thing is the speakers here and now.

Again, like everything else, this is in the CLL. Read chapter 10.
Yes, it's the here and now. As for using VI like TAG, I quote froim
the CLL (12.10): "So far, we have seen tenses only just before the
selbri, or (equivalently in meaning) floating about the bridi with
``ku''. There is another major use for tenses in Lojban: as sumti
tcita, or argument tags" i.e. VI and its friends are subsets of tags.
Grammatically, they pretty much work the same way. The major
difference is how they are semantically intrepreted when used with
"i___bo" where BAI act differnet than tenses.

--gejyspa

> i.e. {broda baku} = "broda occurs {ba (in the future of) } ...... speaker's
> present/location"
> {broda viku} ?= "broda occurs {vi (short distance of) } .... speaker's
> present/location"..... wow... that feels odd. Clearly genai VI and TAG are
> entirely different gi I don't understand ga VI gi TAG
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 2:39 PM, Stela Selckiku <selckiku@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 12:51 PM, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > I originally thought that {vi} and friends were just like {ca} such that
>> > {mi
>> > tcidu vi lo tricu} would be understood as "I read [short-distance-from]
>> > a
>> > tree" and if I had used {vu} instead it would have been "I read
>> > [long-distance-from] a tree".
>>
>> That's the old standard definition.
>>
>> > A while back though, I was corrected by someone or other that I want
>> > {bu'u}
>> > and friends for that sort of thing and that my original sentence
>> > actually means
>> > something else (what it means I don't remember any more).
>>
>> What it means under the new definition is "I read a short distance
>> from something, and the length of that distance is a tree." Utter
>> nonsense, as trees aren't lengths.
>>
>> This new definition was invented because there's no other convenient
>> way to specify distances, which is a FAQ and useful thing to be able
>> to do. No one uses termsets, so no one taught nintadni to use
>> termsets for it. Someone sometime got the idea-- either accidentally
>> or intentionally-- to repurpose ZI and VA. Because it's so
>> astoundingly useful, it's spread to be perhaps the most common way
>> those tags are used, even though no one bothered to try to make it
>> official or, apparently, to convince la gejyspa.
>>
>> > .ija'ebo I don't use VI/ZI/etc.. any more as tags. How SHOULD I be
>> > using
>> > them (given either school of thought that selkik was talking about)
>>
>> {mi kelci vi lo tricu}
>>
>> Old School: I play near a tree.
>> New School: I play near something, and the distance I'm from it is
>> tree. (nonsense)
>>
>> {mi zutse zu'a lo tricu vi lo mitre}
>>
>> Old School: I sit to the left of a tree, a short distance from a
>> meter. (nonsense)
>> New School: I sit one meter to the left of a tree.
>>
>> {mi zutse zu'a vi lo mitre bu'u lo tricu}
>>
>> Old School: I sit a short distance to the left of a meter at a tree.
>> (nonsense)
>> New School: I sit to the left one meter from at a tree. (pretty much
>> the same meaning as the last one, but allows you to rearrange the
>> distance and origin)
>>
>> {zu'a vi bu'u lo tricu mi zutse gi'e kelci}
>>
>> Old School and New School: Slightly to the left of a tree, I sit and play.
>>
>> {mi zutse gi'e kelci vau zu'a nu'i lo tricu la'u lo mitre}
>>
>> Old School: I sit and play one meter to the left of a tree.
>> New School: Termsets? What the mabla is that?!
>>
>> .ua nai bu'o cu'i dai
>>
>> mu'omi'e la stela selckiku
>>
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