From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Thu Mar 15 00:50:55 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: iad@math.bas.bg X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 15 Mar 2001 08:50:55 -0000 Received: (qmail 64710 invoked from network); 15 Mar 2001 08:50:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 15 Mar 2001 08:50:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lnd.internet-bg.net) (212.124.64.2) by mta1 with SMTP; 15 Mar 2001 08:50:54 -0000 Received: from math.bas.bg (user211.internet-bg.net [212.124.65.211]) by lnd.internet-bg.net (8.11.1/8.9.0) with ESMTP id f2F8xBc16570 for ; Thu, 15 Mar 2001 10:59:11 +0200 Message-ID: <3AB081A4.B76B2169@math.bas.bg> Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 10:47:32 +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 > >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_. By George, what a disgraceful error. _ir_, _ir_, _ir_, _ir_, _ir_ (995 more times to go). > or maybe you were thinking of the imperative, where _anda a_ > can indeed replace _ve a_, but only in that mode, weird. More likely I was thinking of Italian, where _and-_ and _v-_ have fallen together into a single suppletive paradigm (infinitive _andar(e)_, indicative 3sg. _va_). > >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. We can agree to disagree on that. > >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. How about `almost not'? (`almost fail' = `barely succeed'.) > > > [...] 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. > > That's because you're too much in love with the contour markers There is that -- to an extent. But I'm also too much in love with the idea of Lojban as a literal kind of language where all markers (and other words) mean what they're meant to mean. --Ivan