From lojbab@lojban.org Tue May 23 03:44:17 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 30769 invoked from network); 23 May 2000 10:44:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 23 May 2000 10:44:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy.cais.net) (205.252.14.63) by mta1 with SMTP; 23 May 2000 10:44:16 -0000 Received: from bob (73.dynamic.cais.com [207.226.56.73]) by stmpy.cais.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id GAA10017 for ; Tue, 23 May 2000 06:42:32 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.2.2.20000523063152.00b07100@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: vir1036/pop.cais.com@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.2 Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 06:45:59 -0400 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] le ga'ifanta In-Reply-To: References: <94.4b5defb.265b440f@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" At 03:00 AM 05/23/2000 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote: > > Anyhow, is the mirror image of , 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. has the advantage over > that > > it does not commit you to the event actually happening, but that force of > > 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 don't read that much into pu'o! I know it as "in the future, and not in >the past or now." No. That is punaijecanaijeba. pu'o says nothing about the present or past except by implicature. The perfective tenses, being arranged about an event, ignore those portions of the timeline that are not relevant to the event. If you are in such a part of the timeline, you cannot use perfective tenses to discuss them. Now normally you can arbitrarily make any time after an event be "ba'o" that event by mere mention, though talking about the present as "ba'o the Neanderthals" seems rather off unless I am talking about the current music scene zo'o. But as pc said, not every time before an event has happened is it pu'o that event - you need some sense that the conditions are in place or are about to be in place to initiate the event. Now is not "pu'o a faster than light drive", though it might be "pu'o the heat death of the universe" since the necessary conditions are all in place. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org