Subject: RE: [lojban] mi nanca li (was: Re: Newbie says hi

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 23:17:49 -0000

xorxes:
> la and cusku di'e
> 
> >Idioms are very mabla toljbo, and hence {mi nanca li 18} is too. We need
> >a better way to say it, which generalizes to all measurements of duration:
> >
> >"The (linear) time from inception of x1 to (punctual) time x3 is x2 units 
> >in duration."
> 
> I don't agree that {mi nanca li cixa} is an idiom. I think
> {nanca} already means what you want, except that time x3 is
> the time of the event. Otherwise you have to take {nanca} as
> an atemporal predicate, but normal predicates in Lojban are
> not forcedly atemporal, so why force {nanca} to be one?

I certainly don't agree that "normal" predicates are not atemporal.
The temporality is determined by the sense of the predicate. Some,
like {cadzu}, are plainly true of certain time segments and false
of other time segments. Others, like {mamta}, are not plainly true
of certain time segments and false of others. I see no forcing
going on. Durations do seem to me to be atemporal -- that the first
world war lasted for 4 years seems to me be as true of the future
is it is of the past. Certainly I wouldn't see a necessity to
insert an implicit or explicit {pu} in "the first world war nanca
li vo", and nor do I see a necessity to insert an implicit {ba} in
"2003 nanca li pa".

If I am arriving late at a theatre, I mean entirely different
things when I ask "How long does the performance last?" and "How
much time has elapsed since the performance began?" -- I don't see
these as merely different standards for measuring duration; rather,
they're durations of quite different things.

> We can say: {ca li pasobici mi nanca li paze}, "In 1983 I was 17",
> or {ca li renoreno mi nanca li muvo romu'ei le du'u mi za'o jmive},
> "In 2020 I will be 54 if I'm still alive" 

This I see as an abuse of {nanca}, perhaps influenced by our native
tongues.

> There is nothing strange about {mi} nanca-ing different
> numbers at different times 

I suppose the way to get the result you want is to take the meaning
of {mi}-qua-event as variable: that is, {mi} is an event that
spreads through time. In this case the issue is not about nanca
but rather about whether we see events as occupying a certain time
span atemporally, or as dynamically spreading through time.

> The other perspective, considering that {mi} labels some
> timeless object with a duration that goes from birth to
> death, does not seem to be all that useful 

It seems to me to be very useful, and indeed is very much the way
I intuitively conceive of durations. I see the first world war
as nondynamically occupying a certain region of spacetime, I don't
see us as being in the aftermath of WWI having dynamically spread
through 4 years.

> >This would generalize to, say, "At that time, I had been living in London 
> >for 8 months", as well as to "I am 18 years old" 
> 
> I would say: {ca le co'e le nu mi xabju la londn cu masti li bi} 

Whereas my natural inclination would be to take {le nu mi xabju la londn 
cu masti li bi} to mean that 8 months is the total duration of the
entire event of my residence in London. Likewise for "the film lasts
2 hours", "March is 31 days long", "television ad breaks last 3.5
minutes", etc. "How long is the ad break?" means something different
to me from "How long has the ad break been going on for?". (Of course,
once the ad break is over, "How long did the ad break go on for?"
ends up meaning the same thing as "How long was the ad break?".)

--And.