Subject: Re: [lojban] le ga'ifanta

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 22:16:47 EDT

In a message dated 00-05-22 13:18:38 EDT, you write:

<< le ga'ifanta ba'o cfari .i pu'o fanmo va'o le mu'e mumoi nanca mo'u le
za'i loi cukta mo'u paprici'a >>

Barring another revolution I missed, some comments (and notice that I am not 
offering to take on this translation task):
First is clean: the freeze has started;- the start is over and its effects 
(the ongoing freeze) continue. 
But:
why not a subject for the second: it is obvious (I suppose, though so often 
it has been scilicentious <mi>), but I think it is a bad habit, even if 
elegant. <ri> or <gy>.
Or just conjoin the predicates with the appropriate form of <e>. 

Anyhow, <pu'o> is the mirror image of <ba'o>, causes all together but not yet 
actually begun, "is about to." This does not apply to the end of the freeze; 
almost none of the causes are in place -- an adequate-sized group of 
competent lb speakers, for instance. <pu'o> has the advantage over <ba> that 
it does not commit you to the event actually happening, but that force of 
<ba> is mitigated by the general uncertainty of the future and could here be 
further diluted by some weasly epistemolgical flag, "they say," or so. Of 
course, here the point is to lay down the ruling, not make a prediction, so a 
stronger but less specific form might be appropriate: "if it ever ends, it 
will be after at least five years after..."

I am not sure what <mu'e> could mean with <nanca> in a rational way: being a 
duration is almost by definition a state, or, at best, an activity, not an 
achievement. But, since it is hard to make rational sense of it yet it is 
legal, we can make an idiom and the one you suggest "the completion (full 
realization) of the fifth year" [it should be <su'omumoi>] is the best 
candidate for practical purposes. 

I haven't put a parser to it, but I don't follow the next bit "the fifth year 
at the natural end of the state of the books at the end of being 
page-written" Published? But that is an achievement in one way, so the fifth 
year _after_ it, or a state, so the fifth year of it (i.e. being in print). 
I think you want the <mo'u> with the <mumoi nanca>, not the <le za'i ... 
papr_y_ci'a>. So move it in front of the selbri -- and thus take care of the 
question about the <mu'e>. "under the condition that the state of the books 
being in print has reached the end of its fifth year (at least)." I am not 
sure this quite says that even yet, maybe (because I am unsure especially 
about how the second fits into the place structure) <le mu'e li su'omu mo'u 
se nanca le za'i le cukta (it has to be all the books, remember) cu 
papryci'a> taking the last to be "are in print."

You make this sound like a sufficient condition to end the freeze, but it is 
only necessary, so -- despite the <su'o> it is too strong . " For all x, if x 
is the date of the end of the freeze, then x is at least five years after the 
publication (achievement sense) of the books."