From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Mon Mar 12 01:47:50 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: iad@math.bas.bg X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 12 Mar 2001 09:47:50 -0000 Received: (qmail 35888 invoked from network); 12 Mar 2001 09:47:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 12 Mar 2001 09:47:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lnd.internet-bg.net) (212.124.64.2) by mta3 with SMTP; 12 Mar 2001 10:48:53 -0000 Received: from math.bas.bg (ppp18.internet-bg.net [212.124.66.18]) by lnd.internet-bg.net (8.11.1/8.9.0) with ESMTP id f2C9tQc08253 for ; Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:55:26 +0200 Message-ID: <3AAC9808.7D5745DE@math.bas.bg> Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:34:00 +0200 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.74 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Regional difference ?? References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski Your Laugh of the Year (off-topic, but you'll love it): Lamb nauseates with green salad and mushroom sauce (Seen on the menu of a restaurant in Sofia) ------------------------------------------------------------ Jorge Llambias wrote: > I suppose we could get "almost" as {pu'o je ca'anai}, > "about to but actually not", and "barely" as {pu'onai je ca'a}, > "about not to but actualy yes" (is that what {pu'onai} means?), > but they are hideously complicated. Worse, I can't interpret {pu'onai} as `about not to'; it comes across as `not about to', which is false (if I did catch the train, then I *was* about to, even though I thought I wasn't). There really is no (simple) way of saying `about not to', because the not happening of something isn't an event (no event, no event contour; no event contour, no prelude). Let's look at another domain, quantity. I'd say that `almost caught' is to `almost 100' (which can mean 98 or 99 or so) as `barely caught' is to `only 100' (which does mean 100 but not 101 or 102). What's the story about `only'? --Ivan