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

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 03:37:55 +0100

Xorxes to Ivan:

[...]
> Ok, let me define better what I am saying.
> 
> We have four related situations that I find interesting and
> want to be able to express in Lojban. The situations are the
> following:
> 
> 1- An event happening when it should no longer be happening.
> I use the tag "still" for this situation, because I think it

[etc.]

> Now, we can see some affinities between these four
> situations and some of Lojban's aspects. For example,
> we can make the following associations:
> 
> za'o - "still"
> pu'o - "not yet"
> ca'o - "already"
> ba'o - "no longer"
> 
> These agree in several properties. For example, {za'o}
> and {ca'o}, like "still" and "already", show that the event
> is indeed happening, and "pu'o" and "ba'o", like "not yet"
> and "no longer", correspond to the not-happening stage.

I think there's a mistake here. It's with the putative 
za'o--"still" affinity. Not to deny such an affinity, but
it doesn't belong in the overall pattern, which is more
like:

still = "ca'o, not ba'o"
not yet = "pu'o, not ca'o"
already = "ca'o, not pu'o"
no longer = "ba'o, not ca'o"

"za'o", however, is "ba'o completion, and ca'o". [Can't do
that in proper Lojban at the mo, bcs my wife's asleep in
the room with my woldy codex in.]

Presumably "ca'o, not ba'o" can quite easily be rendered into
Lojban, and I seem to recall this already having been done in
your exchange with Ivan.

> They are also good matches for indicating the relative
> position of the actual event: In {za'o} and {ca'o} the actual
> event is occurring. In {ba'o}, like in "no longer", the actual
> event is in the past. In {pu'o}, like in "not yet", the actual
> event (if it occurs at all) is in the future.
> 
> But what about the expectations? Here the only good match
> is {za'o}, because it indicates that the event is happening
> beyond the expected end, just what I want for the situation
> I tagged as "still".

But the only reason why the continuation of za'o broda is
unexpected is that events that instantiate a telic event type
*normally* cease once the telic event type has been instantiated.
But that's an accident of the way (our conceptualization of) the
world is. But there's nothing intrinsic to za'o that entails or
even implies unexpectedness; za'o simply means "instantiates a
telic event type and continues after the telic event type has
been instantiated".

> None of the others match the expectations that I require.
> {pu'o} does not have the expectation that the event should
> already be happening, {ca'o} does not carry the expectation
> that the event should not yet have started, {ba'o} does not
> have the expectation that the event should still be happening.
> So, in that sense, {za'o} is more affine to "still" than any
> of the others are to their closest match.

I think you're going down the garden path with za'o. The solution
to your requirements is Ivan's -- the one I've given above.

> 
> Now, how do I get the others from {za'o}? "still not" is
> the easiest, it is just {za'o na}. I am tempted to use
> {na za'o} for what I tagged as "no longer". It may not
> be strictly correct, it all depends on how the scope of
> {na} plays with the expectation of {za'o}, but in the
> absence of anything better, I will use it. Finally,
> for the "already" situation I would use {na za'o na},
> whith the same comment as for {na za'o}.

A rare case where we disagree without me fairly quickly realizing
that you're right.

> >Of course it would -- I love symmetry myself -- as long as that can
> >be matched to some meaning. Trouble is, I don't see how it can.
> 
> I do. I can think of many events with a natural starting point
> that doesn't always coincide with the actual starting point.

I think the discrepancy between you & Ivan here is due to you each 
using slightly different analytical frameworks for ZAhO, where Ivan's 
is both the one more standard in linguistics and the one that informed 
the design of ZAhO, though not its exposition in reference material.

The crucial difference is whether you think in terms of 'natural
endpoints' or in terms of 'completeness/completability/possession
of intrinsic boundaries'. If you think in terms of 'natural endpoints',
as you and the reference materials do, then that naturally implies
analogous concepts involving natural startpoints (e.g. puberty).
But those concepts aren't implied if you think in terms of "intrinsic
boundaries", i.e. an event counterpart of the count/mass distinction
we're familiar with from English nouns (though not from Lojban selbri).
Put another way, it is no coincidence that in words for beginnings
there is no counterpart of the stop/finish distinction.

Mind you, I do agree with you. Last week I gave as an example of
"za'o counting up to ten" a situation where you're counting
through the teens having started from 1. But one can equally
imagine "xa'o counting from 20 to 30" [xa'o = experimental] as 
denoting counting through the teens as part of a larger situation of 
counting up to 30+. Hence I agree that, conceptually, there is some 
kind of inceptive counterpart to za'o.

--And.