Subject: Re: [lojban] Regional difference ??

From: Ivan A Derzhanski <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:34:00 +0200

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)

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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