From jorge@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xxx Sun Feb 28 09:41:08 1999 X-Digest-Num: 81 Message-ID: <44114.81.494.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 14:41:08 -0300 From: "=?us-ascii?Q?Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas?=" The current system is simplified to remove constraints, >but we don't want random strings of tense-related cmavo to be legal - we >want things that we can interpret via grouping rules etc. You do realize that this goes against your ku interpretation, don't you? With your interpretation, any random string of tense related cmavo can be used "as if compounded", so the restriction on some types of direct compounding becomes an unnecessary burden. >>If the complex tense grammar has any reason of being is >>precisely to _prevent_ some combinations from happening. > >Indeed that is the intent, but especially to prevent ambiguous groupings. Can you give an example of an ambiguous grouping? Whatever example you give will be grammatical with ku, so that must mean that those ambiguities are still present with your interpretation. >Grammatically noncompoundable. Semantically, we can do whatever seems >necessary, and "as if compunded" seems like the simplest interpretation >(and I am not sure you have presented an alternative one). But I have presented an alternative one: treat each full tense as a separate entity. In fact, I'm not proposing anything that is not already doable by other means. What I'm saying is, treat every ku as being the same as zo'e. For single tenses this is already the case (ignoring for the moment the anomalous ZAhOs). Indeed, having more than one tense in the same bridi is very simple to do: {mi klama le zarci ca le cerni ba le nu mi do vitke kei pu le nu do klama le briju}, those tenses don't stack up, so there's nothing novel in what I'm saying. Allowing different ku tenses to be read as one single compound tense makes the whole complexity of the tense grammar pointless. co'o mi'e xorxes