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

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 08:13:57 PDT

la ivAn cusku di'e

> > 1- An event happening when it should no longer be happening.
>
>Fine. And by what standard should it no longer be happening?

A purely contextual. There is something about the situation
being described that makes the happening of the event to
contrast with a situation where it no longer is happening.

>All these `still'-like categories imply the following things:
>
>(a) a current positive state (if something still is, it is),
>(b) an earlier positive state (for something to still be,
> it must have been),
>(c) an assumed later negative state (you don't think of things
> as still being if they are going to last for ever),

Right, I think we all agree about those three components.

>(d) a hypothetical current negative state, which is contextually
> salient in some way or the other, but it may or may not be
> someone's expectation, may or may not have been likely, may
> or may not be what should be, etc. (a natlang may express
> some of these things by choosing one form or another; Lojban
> would probably use attitudinals for this purpose, eg `still
> not' may be `not yet' + <impatience>, <surprise> or the like).

Well, this is the key component, of course. I don't attitudinals
help here. Attitudinals, as I understand them, express the
reaction of the speaker to some situation, they reflect how
the situation affects the speaker. What "still" expresses is
a property of the situation independent of how it affects the
speaker. The speaker may well feel impatient that some situation
is _still_ going on. But the situation would still be "still"
whether or not the speaker feels impatient about it.

>{le ctuca pu za'o ciksi le seldanfu le tadgri}.
> (They had understood it already.)
>`The teacher was still explaining the problem to the class.'
> (Very likely they hadn't yet.)
>
>The expressions `expected (?) end point' and `natural end'
>may sound kind of similar, but the concepts are different.
>(Whorf is observing all this from his cloud, and smiling.)

Right, "still" is much less specific than strict {za'o}.
But {za'o} is still the only ZAhO that has at least a whiff
of this (d) component. And since {za'o} is grammatical even
with events that are not very telic, its extension into
"still" territory seems to me almost unavoidable. Unless
some better solution comes along, of course.

>Lojban's ZAhO, for example, ignore intensity and focus on the
>existence of a process or event and the causal links between them.

{pu'o}, {co'a}, {ca'o}, {co'u}, and {ba'o} focus on that.

{mo'u} and {za'o} add another parameter, the culmination point,
that focuses on more than simple existence.

{de'a} and {di'a} add yet another parameter, interruption.

And {co'i} must probably add something else, but I don't know what.

>The question is then: Having chosen those fundamental parameters,
>does it offer a complete system built upon them?

Wrell, we are missing at least the aspect for the period
between {de'a} and {di'a}. {ba'ode'a}? {pu'odi'a}? what about
the neutral one between those two?)

>and it seems
>to me that Lojban's system is indeed complete, in that if one
>wants to augment it, one has to add another dimension.

Maybe, but the dimension symmetric to "culmination" would
be a reasonable first candidate.

> > I do. I can think of many events with a natural starting point
> > that doesn't always coincide with the actual starting point.
>
>What do you have in mind?

le ctuca pu xa'o ciksi le seldanfu le tadgri

The teacher was talking and talking about
the problem but not getting to the point.

co'o mi'e xorxes

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