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

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 03:37:53 +0100

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.