Subject: Re: Looking down

From: Nick NICHOLAS <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 14:03:18 -0700 (PDT)

On 16 Jul 2001 [email-masked] wrote:

> Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 18:10:31 -0400
> From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
> Subject: Re: Re: Looking down

> >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?
> I think the former.

If so, then fa'a does *not* follow the 'imaginary journey' model, and that
needs to be stated somewhere. It also needs to be resolved whether
'inwards' and 'outwards' also describe direction, or imaginary journey.
Because at the moment, unless this is resolved, *fa'a is undefined* (If we
don't know whether it indicates direction or location, saying it means
{farna} is not helpful.)

> >Concretely, what do the following mean?
> >do fa'a bacru:
> > You speak towards something
> I vote for this one though I wouldn't use it

Therefore, you would use {do fa'a catlu} to mean "you look towards
something"? For that matter, is it "towards something" or "towards the
speaker's here-and-now"? All other spatial/temporal tenses are by default
with respect to the here-and-now, but the Book explicitly says {fa'a} is
not ego-centric, and that that job is done by {zo'i} instead.

> >do fa'a ni'a bacru:
> > You speak downwards
> do fa'a le cnita ku bacru

If {do zu'a le cnita be mi cu bacru} means the same as {do zu'a ni'a mi
bacru}, which means the same as {do ni'a zu'a
bacru} (accounting for the reversal of modals from the ego-center), then I
don't see what {fa'a le cnita} shouldn't be the same as some combination
of {fa'a} and {ni'a}. In particular, {do fa'a le cnita be da cu bacru}
should be the same as {do fa'a ni'a da bacru}, no? (Analogy is a
force you really don't want to get in the way of.) Which presumably is not
a million miles away from {do fa'a ni'a bacru}, mutatis mutandis.

> > You speak, while situated below something else (not the speaker)
> That would be "do ni'a bacru"

Which means {fa'a} is not merely a non-egocentric locative. OK, that's
something.

> fa'ani'a is vague since we don't have a theory for multiple FAhAs. It
> means "in some specific direction and then downward" by the imaginary
> journey metaphor

We do have a theory of multiple FAhA (obviously); it's the imaginary
journey model. What we don't have concretely is any notion of what {fa'a}
is used for, not only in combination with other FAhA, but even on its own.
If it really is directional rather than locative, and you can say
(redundantly) {mi
jarco fa'a le bloti} for "I point towards the boat", then {fa'a} doesn't
follow the imaginary journeys model, and is thus not described adequately
by the book.

And this business about usage deciding is a canard. If noone knows what
{fa'a} is there for, noone will use it, and usage won't determine squat.
We've already seen this in the responses to this question, in which everyone
went for a tanru to avoid using a tense at all. Contrary to what seems to
be prevailing ideology, there is still something to be said for prescription
filling in blanks in Lojban.

In any case, unless told explicitly not to, I will include in my exercises
the phrase {ko'a fa'a ni'a catlu} for "she looked down", making the
further assumption that {ni'a} after {fa'a} is relative to {ko'a} rather
than {mi}, because {fa'a} speaks of directions relative to someone other
than {mi}. I am willing to remove it from the exercises, but only if I am
told what {ko'a fa'a ni'a catlu} means *instead of* "she looked down" ---
which at the moment I haven't been told. If I'm told "usage will decide",
I'm going to make my usage contribute towards deciding it.

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\[email-masked]|||||||Transient Passenger||||||Nick Nicholas||||||||||
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