Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Looking down

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 20:29:20 -0400

At 02:03 PM 07/16/2001 -0700, Nick NICHOLAS wrote:
>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.

Then I am misunderstanding your wording above or something, since I 
interpret the former as being the imaginary journey version of fa'a. fa'a 
says that the imaginary journey to the event goes from the reference 
TOWARDS the point other than the speaker and your second choice talks about 
moving FROM that point, which is exactly backwards.

>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.)

It is direction in the same sense that ni'a/cnita is direction, except that 
fa'a would normally be used to indicate a direction not one of the 
canonical directions. Most often fo course, fa'a would be used as a tag, 
and fa'a da fasnu means that the event is in the direction of da from the 
reference.

> > >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"?

The even of speaking seems more obviously directional in that the sound 
travels from speaker to that direction. Looking has a direction, but the 
event of looking seems to be co-located with the looker and not the path of 
the gaze. So do fa'a catlu tells me where catlu is and not where se catlu 
is. Of course it would be clearer to use fa'a in a relative phrase for 
that predicate.

> 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,

Yes, the reference is 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.

What this means is that
zo'i zo'e is thus equivalent to fa'a mipeca and the default zo'e for fa'a 
zo'e is na'ebomipeca

> > >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),

I'm sorry, but your terminological use is confusing the hell out of me.

To me ni'azu'a and zu'ani'a mean the same thing because going left and then 
down gets you to the same place as going down and then left. Examples 3.1 
and 3.2 on page 218 say this and make it clear that the ordinary imaginary 
journey is from the speaker in the first direction and then in the second 
direction.

zo'i is a movement towards the speaker which is kinda meaningless in the 
first position unless the reference is for some reason set elsewhere from 
the speaker.

ASCII art time:

mi <-- zo'i --> zi'o ^
|
fa'a

zi'o and fa'a are identical when starting from the speaker on an imaginary 
journey.

>then I don't see what {fa'a le cnita} shouldn't be the same as some 
>combination
>of {fa'a} and {ni'a}.

fa'a le cnita means moving towards a point cnita from some unspecified 
position, which is typically the space time reference (usually the 
speaker), but need not be in a compound tense.
zi'o le cnita means moving towards a point cnita from the speaker

fa'ani'a means fa'a da ni'a, moving towards some point da, and then moving 
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?

No, I do not see this

>(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.

To play this game you need to start with fa'a da ni'a de, and I think you 
get a different answer.

> > > 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.

Whatever that means.

>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.

Right. Bad wording, and I don't know what I meant.

> 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.

The whole FAhA scheme of course predates the imaginary journey, and the 
some of the words favored usage with mo'i while others the simple 
direction. We also knew that the space time reference could be set 
elsewhere from the speaker. fa'a allowed for motion in some particular 
direction not necessarily starting at the speaker and hence non-radial 
motion. Compound FAhA with imaginary journeys cover the most common cases 
of non-radial motion such as down from a point to the left. fa'a itself 
would almost always be used with a sumti because otherwise you don't know 
what direction it is. zi'o is nearly as vague except that you know that it 
is away from the speaker in some direction and would be used most often 
where it isn't that important which direction it is in as long as it is 
away from the speaker.

>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.

I suspect that Cowan and I at least know what it is used for.

To make life easy for you, it is safe to say that if it isn't clear to 
anyone else, it doesn't belong in introductory lessons.

>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.

I have no idea what that sentence means.

>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.

My first comment on the lessons to you is: why are you even considering 
*any* exercise that is so uncertain that usage is not *completely* clear in 
what O thought were "introductory lessons"? These are questions for the 
back chapters of the big textbook, for the most advanced 
learners. Beginners probably won't even use FAhA at all, or will use only 
the simplest cases thereof.

I think this means that if there are many more things where you are 
explorng the fringes of what has already been done with the language, then 
you are probably working at an order of magnitude too advanced a level for 
our target audience for a package zero lesson set.

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org