Subject: Re: [lojban] Opposite of za'o

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 01 Jul 2000 10:07:36 PDT

la lojbab cusku di'e

>Maybe for time travel tenses we need something for beginning before the
>natural beginning of an event? I have trouble coming up with a solid
>example otherwise.

"Please sit down!" "I'm already sitting down."
Natural beginning: after the request.
Actual beginning: before the request, thus "already" is used.

>BTW, I almost put "even", "only" and "just" in there with those last three,
>and these are things that I think we have pretty much agreed are NOT Lojban
>tenses,

I definitely agree that they are not tenses. They go in the
same category as "also", they modify arguments, or the selbri
itself, not the whole bridi.

>but somehow I suspect that whatever is the issue with the former
>also applies to the latter - there is some sort of mismatch between the
>mental state expected by the speaker and the real world, and this is an
>attitudinal or discursive comment indicating that difference.

The mental state of the speaker is not relevant. They are
purely descriptive of a situation. There is a mismatch, but not
with a state that is particularly related to the speaker.
A mismatch between the natural state and the actual state.

>>There is no difficulty with "not yet". The most problematic
>>is "already", which has two contrasts with "still".
>
>I don't see why it isn't simply "ba'o". The event is complete. My son 
>says
>"I've already eaten dinner" as he takes a "snack" which happens to be
>another full microwave-dinner but not the one we prepared for him.

And why doesn't he just say "I've eaten dinner"? What does
"already" add to that statement? Maybe because the natural
state is that dinner has not started yet?

{mi ba'o citka le sanmi} is closer to "I've eaten dinner".
"Already" adds something which is missing in both of them.

co'o mi'e xorxes

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