From nicholas@uci.edu Mon Jul 16 14:03:24 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 16 Jul 2001 21:03:23 -0000 Received: (qmail 5838 invoked from network); 16 Jul 2001 21:03:23 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 16 Jul 2001 21:03:23 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta3 with SMTP; 16 Jul 2001 21:03:18 -0000 Received: from localhost (nicholas@localhost) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA04389; Mon, 16 Jul 2001 14:03:18 -0700 (PDT) X-Authentication-Warning: e4e.oac.uci.edu: nicholas owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 14:03:18 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: To: Cc: Nick NICHOLAS Subject: Re: Looking down In-Reply-To: <995272268.557.39612.l10@yahoogroups.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Nick NICHOLAS On 16 Jul 2001 lojban@yahoogroups.com wrote: > Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 18:10:31 -0400 > From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" > 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. /||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||\ | "One must first know that traditionally a Japanese bus has carried not || | only a driver but one or more young girls who stand in the aisles and || | sell tickets, announce stops, and in general console the passengers for|| | the inadequacies and discomforts of this transient world." \ | --- Roy Andrew Miller, _The Japanese Language_, p. 251 \ |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| \||||nicholas@uci.edu|||||||Transient Passenger||||||Nick Nicholas|||||||||| ==\||||||||||||www.opoudjis.net||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||/ ()() ()() ()()