Subject: Re: [lojban] space tenses

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 04:33:02 EDT

In a message dated 8/9/2002 6:14:06 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

<<
> I have a problem with {vi} here, since I use it to mark distance
> magnitude rather than position, but since that is another
> discussion I will just change to another example. Let's
> say {re'o le birjanco}.
>>
Usually I can see some reason for your unlojban, but this one escapesme, 
since we have perfectly good metrics and nothing else that does points. 
Another time, maybe.

<<
The general way I understand BAIs is this:

ko'a BAI broda = BAI ku ko'a broda = BAI zo'e ko'a broda

This is also valid for other tags, like tenses. So for example
{mi pu klama} means {pu zo'e mi klama}, "in the past of the
understood reference point (usually now) I go", i.e. "I went".

And, rather unintelligibly (at first glance at least), {fV}, the fundamental 
place tags (elided when in place). But that is consistent with the notion 
that BAI as sumti tcita add new places to the selbri.

<<
Unfortunately this analysis doesn't work for the way some people
use {pu'o} and {ba'o} (see for example Nick's last post asking
for proofreading. He wrote: {.i mi [...] cu ca'e cpedu lenu ro
se cinri cu rore'u banlytroci pranygau lanli le cfacilre cmacku
.e le velcli pu'o li 20 pi'e 9.} The way I read it he was asking
for everyone to hold back on doing anything until september 20.)
Well, I have some problems with this sentence (the tanru is upside down and 
backward for what I think he is saying -- but he may be saying something 
totally different, which I can't figure out), but whatever it is, it is to be 
done BY 9/20 "in anticpation of" that date. Which suggests that your view of 
how tense (and by implication BAI) works as sumti tcita, is about 180 off 
(that 9/20 is the initiative aspect of all this activity, whatever it is?).

<<
But anyway, leaving aside those two exceptions pu'o and ba'o,
the rest of the tags do have the same meaning as selbri tcita
as they do as sumti tcita, don't they?

Yes and no. As sumtci they attach to the axis, as selbritci (which is not a 
really good way of putting I think) they assume the given axis (here and now, 
except as context shall alter). So, it LOOKS like the event is the axis, 
whereas it is only that the event is AT the axis (or whatever the marker is). 
Had nitcion said {pu'o lanli} he would be saying that we should already be 
doing this even as he requests it -- which makes the request even weirder 
than the {ca'e} does (actually, it is the request that makes the {ca'e} 
weird). 

<<
So {ko'a dasni le boxfo re'o le birjanco} is just a more
precise way of saying {ko'a re'o dasni le boxfo} where
the complement of {re'o} has been made explicit.
No, the first says adjacent to the axis -- wherever that is; the second tells 
you where the relevant axis is. The first axis is set by context and 
convention, the second explicitly.

<<
>{be} makes what follows a part of the description, so it has
>to be restrictive.
> >>
>it adds a place to the main selbri, in this case {dasni}, saying where the
>object2 is worn.

How do you get to that meaning? Why does it add a place for where x2
is worn and not a place for where x1 is while wearing it, for example?
That, too, since that is also a place where x2 is worn -- and so on outward 
to the ends of the universe. And notice that the question -- and so the 
places -- can be repeated indefintely many times. All of which is what I 
meant by saying the distinction is Gricean: the right one is the one that 
answers the question asked (first cooperative convention) (Gallagher and 
Shehan: where did Marie Antoinette lose her head? At the end of her neck. 
[it was that bad then, too -- deliberate violations of Grice make bad jokes])

<<
Space tenses in Lojban need a lot of discussion in my opinion.
They are very messy

Some are (like {mo'i} and the rest of that group, which no one has used 
plausibly so far as I have seen), most aren't. Time tenses are much worse 
(including {po'u} and its kin).