Subject: Re: [lojban] I almost caught the train

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 19:44:52

la ivAn cusku di'e

>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 ...

Actually _ir a_, or _estar por_. _Andar a_ only works for
_andar a caballo_ and _andar a pie_... :) or maybe you were
thinking of the imperative, where _anda a_ can indeed replace
_ve a_, but only in that mode, weird.

>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).

It still seems to me like a very good approximation.

>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.

And also we don't have anything similar for "barely" yet.

> > [...] 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.
>
><shrug> 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.

That's because you're too much in love with the contour markers
and you don't want them to do any of the dirty work. But someone's
got to do it! :)

co'o mi'e xorxes

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