Subject: Re: [lojban] Looking down

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 08:55:07 -0400 (EDT)

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 [email-masked]
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
--Douglas Hofstadter