From cowan@ccil.org Fri Jul 13 05:55:12 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@mercury.ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 13 Jul 2001 12:55:12 -0000 Received: (qmail 62099 invoked from network); 13 Jul 2001 12:55:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 13 Jul 2001 12:55:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta2 with SMTP; 13 Jul 2001 12:55:07 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 15L2TL-0000ST-00; Fri, 13 Jul 2001 08:55:07 -0400 Subject: Re: [lojban] Looking down In-Reply-To: from Nick Nicholas at "Jul 13, 2001 04:43:10 am" To: Nick Nicholas Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 08:55:07 -0400 (EDT) Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL66 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-eGroups-From: John Cowan From: John Cowan Nick Nicholas scripsit: > [W]hen you don't have an overt predicate of motion involved, you > should be able to exert common sense (implicature) in determining what it > is that moves. I think this is perfectly good pragmatics. In principle it is the whole event that is moving, just as it is the whole event that is a cause or effect or whatever, but it is not defined what it means for an event to move. So pragmatically, we infer movement of an event from movement of the important participants. > But then again, is this simply a sense of directionality, so > that {ni'u catlu le kabri} is enough? Despite the above, I think there is no real movement here. Movement of the eyes is not really enough, any more than I am "moving" while standing still because of the circulation of my blood or the rotation of the Earth. X looks down on Y is a basically static situation, which BTW can be handled by a je-lujvo (X looks:at and is:above Y) unless you are specifically trying to illustrate spatial tenses. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore --Douglas Hofstadter