From: v4hn <me@v4hn.de>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2013 5:55 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] srana zo za'o
On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 07:19:57PM -0800, John E Clifford wrote:
> Ah, the superfective (a stupid thing, but mine own), going on
> with the activities of a process after the perfection of a process:
> keeping on running after having run the mile, keeping on sleeping
> after the alarm (which should mark the end of your "sleep until
> the alarm rings"), living past your three score years and ten
> (or your heirs' need the money). And so on.
> The only two problems with the definition as you read it are
> 1) the end is natural only in context: running a mile is the end
> of running a mile, running after that is keeping on running -- which
> wouldn't be superfective if you were running two miles or a marathon,
How would you utter "ko'a keeps on running after reaching one mile"
in your two miles example?
It will depend. If the aim was to run two miles and the
expectation was that he would do it, then {ca'o} is probably appropriate but not {za'o}, since he is still running the two miles. But if you expected him to fall out after a mile, {za'o} might be appropriate, since your expectation provides a (not quite) natural stopping point. You can play a lot with nuance here.
Also how would you translate the {na za'o surla kakne} sentence in snow white
without za'o? ("could not continue to relax")
This seems weird to me: Therefore it is not the case that the prince kept on being able to relax day and night. Presumably, he could relax if the crisis moment were past, so keeping relaxing seems to mean he was doing it earlier, which doesn't seem right. So, not being able to relax is appropriate before the crisis point and thus not a matter of {za'o} before that point. So, I think the {za'o} is probably a mistake, but the scope problems still bother me a
bit.
> and 2) what you keep on doing is not exactly what you were doing:
> before the end of the mile, you were running the mile, after that
> you are just running, not running the mile (unless you a now running
> another mile, in which case someone might say you are keeping on running
> miles). So it is past some salient point (though just "now" won't do)
This seems to be the case in the snow white sentence and probably also
for the little
prince.
> defined by what you were doing before you began keeping on.
> The salient point is an explicit or implicit limit on the first process,
> after which the activity continues (note that the process/activity
> distinction is not very sharp here). He
turned seventy but he keeps on
> running marathons -- he has done it for a while before seventy but seventy
> is surely an age to give that stuff up, still ... . In all the cases given,
> it seems the relevant point is more implicit than might be ideal,
> however, the {za'o} tells you to look for them and understand more
> of the story because of that.
I just think this ending point is something that wasn't there before the
translation and I wonder how to translate these sentences without
introducing this point.
Usually, probably {ca'o}or nothing.
v4hn
> ________________________________
> From: v4hn <
me@v4hn.de>
> To:
lojban@googlegroups.com > Sent:
Friday, February 15, 2013 6:55 PM
>
Subject: [lojban] srana zo za'o
>
>
[...]
>
> Some examples I found:
>
> In {le cmalu noltru}:
> .i lo cuntu cu srana lo du'u mi za'o jmive gi'ikau mrobi'o
>
> In {lo selfri be la .alis. bei bu'u la selmacygu'e}:
> .i ku'i ry [to le ractu toi] ca na za'o se viska
>
> In {la snime blabi}
> .i se ri'a bo ny [to le noltruni'u toi] na za'o surla kakne ca ga lo donri gi lo nicte