From a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com Fri Jul 14 19:37:55 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 29770 invoked from network); 15 Jul 2000 02:37:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 15 Jul 2000 02:37:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO relay3-gui.server.ntli.net) (194.168.4.200) by mta1 with SMTP; 15 Jul 2000 02:37:54 -0000 Received: from m3-mp1-cvx1c.gui.ntl.com ([62.252.12.3] helo=andrew) by relay3-gui.server.ntli.net with smtp (Exim 3.03 #2) id 13DHgk-0004NZ-00 for lojban@egroups.com; Sat, 15 Jul 2000 03:28:23 +0100 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] Opposite of za'o Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 03:37:53 +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: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" Jimc: > For me as a native speaker, "still" sometimes but not always carries the > expectation that the event should no longer be happening. Examples: > A. Is he still talking? I wish he'd shut up. (expectation) > B. Am I too late to get the special price? No, the sale is still > going on. (no expectation) [snipped examples for the rest of the stil/already quadrangle] At some point earlier in this thread, Ivan pointed out that "still/already p" asserts p and contrasts it with not-p. (More exactly, still-p contrasts with ba'o-p and already-p contrasts with pu'o-p [assuming I remember the cmavo right].) Often, not-p ~ ba'o-p/pu'o-p is positively unexpected, but sometimes it is contextually salient for other reasons. For your "the sale is still going on", the speaker is, as you say, not expecting the sale not to be going on, but the previous utterance has made the sale's not-going-on contextually salient. Similar remarks would apply to words like "continue/keep/stay". My point is essentially that we have an explicit understanding of the meaning of still/already, as provided by Ivan. --And.