Subject: [lojban] Re: interactions between tenses, other tenses, and NA

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 23:21:18 -0400 (EDT)

Adam Raizen scripsit:

> 'na' can be interspersed among tenses, and I thought that this was to
> allow constructions such as 'roroi na' = 'always not', 'ka'e na' = 'is
> capable of not', etc. If NA must move to the front of the prenex, but
> tenses don't, then what is the point of having NA interspersed with
> tenses?

There is no *point*, but it's not forbidden either.

> Therefore, I think that tenses work the same as NA, 

That was not the intent.

> Does anyone object to this? Could anyone *really* think that 'roroi na
> broda' means 'not always brodas' (i.e. 'sometimes doesn't broda')? Can
> we get a (quasi-)official pronouncement from Cowan?

Yes, that is what it means. The principle is that everything is exported
to the prenex in the order in which it (first) appears, *except* NA,
which is always exported to the very beginning. In that way, inserting
"na" before the selbri (mixed with tenses any way you like) is always the
exact contradictory negation of the version without "na". (Exception:
when the selbri is a GOhA that has a "na" semantically embedded in it, in
which case the added "na" is pleonastic.)

To say what you want to say with "roroi na", use "roroi naku" instead.

Quasi-officially yours,

-- 
John Cowan [email-masked] www.reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan
"The exception proves the rule." Dimbulbs think: "Your counterexample proves
my theory." Classicists think "'Probat' means 'tests': the exception puts the
rule to the proof." But legal historians know it means "Evidence for an
exception is evidence of the existence of a rule in cases not excepted from."