From nicholas@uci.edu Sun Jul 15 05:34:17 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 15 Jul 2001 12:34:16 -0000 Received: (qmail 30572 invoked from network); 15 Jul 2001 12:34:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 15 Jul 2001 12:34:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta3 with SMTP; 15 Jul 2001 12:34:16 -0000 Received: from [128.195.186.17] (dialin53c-24.ppp.uci.edu [128.195.187.34]) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id FAA29855 for ; Sun, 15 Jul 2001 05:34:14 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: nicholas@e4e.oac.uci.edu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 04:57:20 -0700 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: Looking down From: Nick Nicholas Re the "looking down" business. I do want to illustrate direction cmavo in the lesson exercise, so I don't want to use a tanru. Besides, we have to work out whether either mi {ni'a catlu} or {mi mo'i ni'a catlu} actually mean anything, and if so, what. So: I agree with John that speaking of motion is misleading; and to speak of the light moving, as Pierre suggests, contradicts the essential egocentrism of human language (I will speak of what I do with my eyes, not what photons do!) And correctly points out that what is spoken of in English as moving down is a gaze, not an eyeball; but I shudder to think what the Lojban for "gaze" is, so that won't help either. So without mo'i, does ni'a as a spatial tense indicate the location or the directionality of the selbri? Aulun suggests the latter, so that "looking" has a directionality expressed by {ni'a} ("looking" points like an arrow points, which would be what is meant by "gaze".) But Pierre finds the former is the case, and the Book makes it explicit {ni'a} expresses the 'imaginary journey' taken to where the bridi event takes place, so the event {ni'a catlu} is "looks, below me", not "looks downwards". All well and good. But Jorge countersuggests {fa'a ni'a}. Will *that* work? The Book only says {fa'a} is not ego-centric --- that it involves direction towards some point other than the speaker. But does that mean it expresses the directedness of an event, or is it still describing the imaginary event from that "point other than the speaker" to the bridi event? Concretely, what do the following mean? do fa'a bacru: You speak towards something You speak, while situated towards something else Meaningless (the "some other point" is unspecified") do fa'a ni'a bacru: You speak downwards You speak, while situated below something else (not the speaker) You speak, while situated somewhere towards below me If Jorge is right --- which I'd like for him to be, because that completes a void in Lojban --- it does nonetheless mean that {fa'a} and {to'o} are rather different to the other FAhA cmavo in meaning, because they do *not* describe an imaginary journey. Presumably the same is not true for {zo'i} and {ze'o}. If this is the case, it isn't made clear in the Book, and should be made clear somewhere. (Can't be the lessons, I'm afraid --- though perhaps I could insert a comment accompanying the exercise {fa'a ni'a catlu} would occur in... Nick Nicholas, TLG, UCI, USA. nicholas@uci.edu www.opoudjis.net "Most Byzantine historians felt they knew enough to use the optatives correctly; some of them were right." --- Harry Turtledove.