Subject: I almost caught the train

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:59:09 EST

(Hah! Bqrain w9ork OK this morning! fingers not so good)

Putting xorxes, pi,er and & together with a little Grice, I think the tunnel 
opens up.
I think the {snada/fliba} for catch/miss the (buried) train is Lojban at its 
best; the {ce'a} is almost certainly recoverable as "get on and ride," as 
soon as we figure how to say that. And the {po'u je ca'anai} before the 
inapplicable one now gives the precarious achievement of the opposite. But 
then we can bring in Grice and note that mentioning the inchoative aspect of 
an event is almost a gurantee that it does NOT happen "I was on the verge 
of..." pretty much assures that I don't ..., unless the aspect is mentioned 
to coordinate with some else "when Jessica arrived." And even then, the 
coordinated event is very often one that prevents inchoation from coming to 
initiation -- at that time at least. Sooooo. we can probably drop the {je 
ca'a nai} at least in conversation, if not in scholarly prose (satci bangu?)
I just missed the train = almost caught the train = mi po'u snada ta'u le 
trene
I just barely caugt the train = almost missed the train = mi po'u fliba ta'u 
le trene.

to the side: "almost 100" is {so'a panono}; although {so'a} isn't marked as 
defaulting to "all," it presumably works like all those other guys.
"only" we've been around on so many times I can't remember all the readings 
for it, but {po'o} doesn't fit (and I seem to recall that I never liked it 
anyhow): the present cases seems to amount to something like "I am 
surprised/relieved that it is so little as" - a complex UI.
I have no suggestion for "barely over 100" off the top of mu head.