Subject: Train catching ut nunc

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 11:55:13 EST

xorxes:
<la xod cusku di'e

>If I pause my retelling of a story at the time right before
>a fight appears to break out, I don't see why my listeners should assume
>anything about whether or not the fight actually occurs.

They shouldn't. On the other hand, if you tell me "you know,
this morning Peter and Paul were on the verge of fighting
when the bell rang", then I will probably assume that the
fighting did not occur. Why? Because if it had occured, the
information you are giving me is fairly irrelevant, you
would have told me that they fought, not that they were on
the verge. It is nothing more than an assumption, of course,
based on the further assumption that your purpose in
telling me what you tell me is more than just uttering
true but uninformative or misleading statements. I will
assume that you are telling me the most relevant fact about
their fighting, and if being on the verge is the most
relevant then they probably did not actually fight.>

Beautiful! Welcome to the world of well formulated Gricean analysis. All 
factors present and accounted for.

ivan:
<The trouble is that _be on the verge of_ also means `come close to'
(suggesting `but not ...').  (This is its usual interpretation in
a main clause as opposed to a subordinate one.)  But if that's what
you mean, you should say so, and {pu'o} is not the way to say it.>

That completes the circle, since {pu'o} got into this discussion exactly to 
deal with "come close to" in this sense when other notions seemed to be 
getting away from the point.
So now we have three suggestions (have I missed any essentially different 
ones?) for dealing with "I nearly caught the train" or "I barely caught the 
train" and the like.
1) A tanru with {jibni} or the like. Not {jibni snada} clearly, since -- 
oh, the joys of a logical language! -- a {jibni snada} is still a {snada}.  
So , {snada jibni} for "I almost made it" and converted form {jibni co snada 
tu'a le trene} for the full expression of a failure to catch the train.  
(Note that we still need some Griceing here,since "coming near" does not 
entail not actually reaching, but sure implicates the hell out of it).  
2) {pu'o} and prayer. This works in isolation, given Gricean conventions, but 
whenever some correlated event is mentioned, the implicature fades fast. On 
the other hand, this form invites explanations of why you failed in exactly 
those correlated events. Of course, if you are not inclined to give an 
explanation,...
3) Modified affirmatives or denials: {ja'a ru'e} and {na'e ru'e}. Aside from 
not being sure about the grammaticality of these (though they seem to pass 
both parsers) there is the problem that the "near miss" or "near hit" part is 
lost truth functionally.  
"I just missed the train" can't be countered by "Bourgeous, boy, you were a 
good five minutes late"), since CAI like its kin UI carries no assertion 
value (it only expresses).  

I guess that I reluctantly go for 1 in general, though I think that the other 
have uses on specific occasions.