From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Wed Mar 14 11:19:04 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: iad@math.bas.bg X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 14 Mar 2001 19:19:04 -0000 Received: (qmail 87805 invoked from network); 14 Mar 2001 19:19:04 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 14 Mar 2001 19:19:04 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lnd.internet-bg.net) (212.124.64.2) by mta3 with SMTP; 14 Mar 2001 20:20:06 -0000 Received: from math.bas.bg (ppp206.internet-bg.net [212.124.66.206]) by lnd.internet-bg.net (8.11.1/8.9.0) with ESMTP id f2EJRAc22315 for ; Wed, 14 Mar 2001 21:27:10 +0200 Message-ID: <3AAFC385.1166DBE7@math.bas.bg> Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 21:16:21 +0200 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.74 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] I almost caught the train References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski Jorge Llambias wrote: > la ivAn cusku di'e > >When did the alarm clock go off? -- When the sun was about to rise. > >That is, the alarm didn't ring long before, at or after sunrise; > >it rang just before sunrise, and yes, of course the sun did rise. > > Right, but that would most likely be "the alarm went off when > the sun was about to rise" rather than "the sun was about to > rise when the alarm went off". It could be either. We have two events, an alarm and a sunrise, and a part of the contour of the former is tied to a part of the contour of the latter ({ZAhO1 broda calenu ZAhO2 brode}; pragmatic considerations determine which we'll make {ZAhO1 broda} and which {ZAhO2 brode}). > >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.) > > Exactly. That's what we were aiming for in the first place. Yes. But that's the English _be on the verge of_, which is not necessarily the same thing as _be about to_ or _be going to_, or Spanish _andar a_, or ... all sorts of things in natlangs that differ from selma'o ZAhO in that they were not expressly constructed as event contour markers (and presumably nothing but). > >But if that's what you mean, you should say so, > >and {pu'o} is not the way to say it. > > What is the way to say it? The best thing seems to be a tanru with {jibni}, as brought up by Pycyn in his followup to me. I'm not sure how much I like it. In a better world there might be a cmavo for this, but there isn't. > [...] if there is nothing better, then {pu'o} will almost > inevitably take over, just as I think {za'o} will take over > "still", even if not exactly right, for lack of better > alternatives. That may happen, but if it does, to my mind it will be exactly the same thing as if those meanings are assigned to cmavo chosen at random. --Ivan