Subject: RE:I almost caught the train

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 16:41:22 EST

Subj: Re: [lojban] I almost caught the train  
Date: 3/13/2001   
To: <A HREF="mailto:[email-masked]">[email-masked]</A>    

In a message dated 3/13/2001 1:30:01 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> .<  Why would I say "I was on the verge of
> > fighting" unless I went on "when the so-and-so happened" or "but I got 
> hold
> > of myself and cooled down" or some such?  So, saying it and not adding
> > "when..." implicates that I did not actually fight. (Short Grice lesson,
> > details omitted to make the central point clear.)
> 
> 
> I don't buy this last point. In telling a story, I could reasonably say "I
> was on the verge of fighting when my phone rang, but I ignored it and we
> fought.">
> 

Your case is one of mine, not contrary to it.  The inchoative *is* correlated 
with another event -- the phone ringing -- and thus, of itself, says nothing 
about whether the fight occurred.  You had to add that it did, but you could 
equally have added that it did not.  Without the correlative event, however, 
the implicature is to non-occurence in past tense cases ("most of the time a 
cooperative interlocutor says such a thing the event referred to inchoatively 
did not occur.")

<Now I assert that pu'o
should not be taken to imply anything about whether or not the event ever
occurs; only that it seems likely to.>

Present tense {pu'o} does mean that the event is likely to occur, but is no 
guarantee.  Past tense {pu'o} standing alone actually suggests that the event 
did *not* occur even though it was at the time likely to. (Strictly, it is 
the fact that the speaker USED {pu'o} that implies this, not the word itself, 
which entails the likelihood but nothing more about the actuality.)
{pu'o} itself never entails that the event does take place or that it does 
not.  Its use in certain contexts implicates that the event does not take 
place, in most contexts, however, it implicates nothing beyond its 
entailments.