Subject: barely/almost (was: Re: Regional difference ??)

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:20:16 +0000

pc:
#> how do we say in Lojban "I barely caught the train" and "I almost
#> caught the train"?>
#
#What does sound plausible still is that these are tense/aspect marks rather 
#than adverbial ones to be solved with tanru.

I don't know how to do them in Lojban, but I don't think they're tense/aspect.
A tense/aspect interpretation of barely/almost is only one possible
circumstance (e.g. being almost/barely female is not a tense/aspect
thing). To me, these are a JA'A sort of thing: "almost" = "to a small
extent NA" and "barely = "to a small extent JA'A". (And "very" =
"to a large extent JA'A" and "not at all" = "to a large extent NA".

This is not the same as fuzzy logic with intermediate truth values,
but it does entail that truth and falsity are gradable.

An alternative, which I haven't thought through the implications of, would 
be "almost P" = "in most relevant alternative worlds, P", and "barely
P" = "in most relevant alternative worlds, not P".

--And.