From a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com Fri Jul 07 08:42:39 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 14715 invoked from network); 7 Jul 2000 15:42:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 7 Jul 2000 15:42:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO relay3-gui.server.ntli.net) (194.168.4.200) by mta1 with SMTP; 7 Jul 2000 15:42:35 -0000 Received: from m75-mp1-cvx1c.gui.ntl.com ([62.252.12.75] helo=andrew) by relay3-gui.server.ntli.net with smtp (Exim 3.03 #2) id 13Aa7r-00007w-00 for lojban@egroups.com; Fri, 07 Jul 2000 16:33:12 +0100 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] "za'o" & "still" Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2000 16:42:28 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <39647939.4DF06CDE@math.bas.bg> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" Ivan: > And Rosta wrote: > > I agree with most of what Jorge has said, including that "still" > > shd not be an attitudinal, but I strongly agree with Ivan that > > "za'o" not = "still". > > I'm actually making a stronger statement, namely that no term of > the `still/already' family can be covered by any ZAhO. ZAhO are > semantic cmavo; they say where you are relative to the event contour, > and that's it. Whereas in `still' et al. the pragmatic content takes > precedence. The presuppositions, that is. Cf. the famous examples: > > (a) _Are you beating your wife?_ > (b) _Are you still beating your wife?_ > > (a), which is not a loaded question, can always be answered by `yes' > or `no'. (b) may also be answerable in that way (and if it is, (a) > would also be answered in the same way), but it also may not, because > it has presuppositions which, if not met, rule out both `yes' and > `no'. In fact (b) can be paraphrased as: `(Presupposing that you > used to beat your wife and that you may not be beating her now,) are > you beating your wife?'. > > And how do presuppositions work in Lojban? Not through ZAhO, surely. > But LE might work: a statement with {lenu broda} in it presupposes > that something the speaker describes as a broda event exists, and > if it does not, the statement is pragmatically ill-formed, not false. I think a logical lg is better off the fewer presuppositions it encodes. But a general solution for expressing presupposition is to have some kind of explicit illocutionary force operator (e.g. for assertion) and place the presupposed material outside its scope. > > The question then is, how to express "still" in Lojban. > > It seems obvious that the only way is to use a lujvo: > > "[still] fa le nu broda". > > Where `[still]' is {ranji} or perhaps {stali}. As I said, some > languages actively use `continue V-ing' for `be still V-ing', > and if it weren't for the fact that English is more comfortable > using an adverb, such a solution might provoke less hesitation. Yes; after I wrote my message I came across the message where you said this, and realized how obvious the solution is. --And.