From jorge@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xxx Sun Feb 28 10:05:10 1999 X-Digest-Num: 81 Message-ID: <44114.81.495.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 15:05:10 -0300 From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas?=" From: "michael helsem" > >I have been reading with interest the debate on "stacking" >complex tense cmavo. I like journeying-imaginarily as much >as anyone, but i wonder if it is even necessary to do this >at all. (I'm trying to write using only "aspects" as much >as possible, as a stylistic exercize--BTW, when English >stacks them ["have had", "was going to" & the like], that's >usually what we're trying to express, not the future of a >past or such...) This is exactly right. I have never yet found an occasion where I needed to combine more than one {pu, ca, ba} (and usually not even one of them is needed). Combining aspects, on the other hand, does yield interesting things, like {co'aco'u}, "the beginning of the end", or {ba'oco'a}, "having already started", {pu'omo'u}, "on the verge of being completed", etc. >Why not put some of this information >somewhere else--a BAU, or on one of the gismu? Is there >anything you want to SAY with the conventions suggested >either by Jorge or Lojbab? I think it's mostly a theoretical discussion of principle, it probably doesn't affect any actual usage. But I don't like it when inconsistent conventions are introduced in Lojban, because internal consistency is one of its strong points. >Is the thought in SwiftRain's >poem so very hard to express? As it turned out, what he meant would best be translated with a logical connective. Neither interpretation of multiple tenses was what he wanted. co'o mi'e xorxes