Subject: Re: interactions between tenses, other tenses, and NA

From: "jjllambias2000" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 15:41:54 -0000

la djorden cusku di'e

> People also frequently forget boi when there's two lerfu sumti in
> a row, or ku when there's a joi for sumti. 

Yes, but that seems to be a different type of error. Once you 
understand the reason why the terminator is needed you don't 
have to give a second thought to it. [I think numbers and lerfu
should not have been allowed to merge together, but that's for
some other day. Even so, the rule is learnable.] {na} is different.
Every time I see or write {na} in a longuish or a little bit complex 
sentence I have to spend some time analyzing it before I can
be sure of what it says. And for the next sentence I have to
start from scratch, I haven't developed any intuition about it.

> I don't think the answer
> is language change, but rather more learning. 

Maybe. I haven't given up on {na} yet, I do try to use it
by the Book, but I don't see myself making any progress with
it, as I do about other things. It may very well be that it
just takes longer to learn.

> (Most are still
> pretty much beginners to the language. Saying things wrong every
> now and then means we're broke, not the language).

Of course, and everybody says things wrong every now and then
even in their native language. All I'm saying is that the rule
for {na} is extremely difficult to master, at least for me.

mu'o mi'e xorxes