From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Mon Mar 12 08:20:32 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 12 Mar 2001 16:20:32 -0000 Received: (qmail 76900 invoked from network); 12 Mar 2001 16:20:30 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 12 Mar 2001 16:20:30 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta2 with SMTP; 12 Mar 2001 16:20:30 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:03:21 +0000 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:20:50 +0000 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:20:16 +0000 To: pycyn , lojban Subject: barely/almost (was: Re: Regional difference ??) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta 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 rathe= r=20 #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/aspe= ct. 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" =3D "to a small extent NA" and "barely =3D "to a small extent JA'A". (And "very" =3D "to a large extent JA'A" and "not at all" =3D "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= =20 be "almost P" =3D "in most relevant alternative worlds, P", and "barely P" =3D "in most relevant alternative worlds, not P". --And.