From nicholas@uci.edu Mon Jul 16 18:10:11 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 17 Jul 2001 01:10:10 -0000 Received: (qmail 63873 invoked from network); 17 Jul 2001 01:10:09 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 17 Jul 2001 01:10:09 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta2 with SMTP; 17 Jul 2001 01:10:09 -0000 Received: from localhost (nicholas@localhost) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA04420; Mon, 16 Jul 2001 18:10:08 -0700 (PDT) X-Authentication-Warning: e4e.oac.uci.edu: nicholas owned process doing -bs Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 18:10:08 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: To: Cc: Nick NICHOLAS Subject: Looking down: executive summary? Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Nick NICHOLAS OK, I'm enraged, but I know I'm enraged because of stuff going on with me much more than Lojban, and this has a risk of going around in circles, so let me see if I understand this. Because of the keyword {farna}, and Jorge's suggestion {fa'a ni'a catlu}, I had the impression that, whereas other spatial tenses describe an imaginary journey from the speaker to the event or object, {fa'a} does not, but merely states the direction in which the event is pointing, or the speaker is pointing relative to the object. When we say {mi bacru ni'a le bloti}, we mean that there is a downwards imaginary journey from the boat to me. When we say {do ni'a bacru}, we mean that there is a downwards imaginary journey from me to where you are speaking. My impression was that, instead, {mi bacru fa'a le bloti} means, not that there is an imaginary journey from me towards the boat (i.e. saying where the boat is relative to me), but merely that my speaking is pointing towards the boat. And likewise, that {mi fa'a bacru} meant that my speaking was somehow pointing in some direction. It seems that I was wrong; that {fa'a} doesn't really make much sense without an object for the imaginary journey; and that a secondary spatial tense will not supply that object. {fa'a}, it seems, does not say anything about where a speaker or an event is pointing; it still describes an imaginary journey in the given direction, with the difference that this journey involves a landmark. In which case, the sentence {ko'a fa'a ni'a catlu} is removed. Like I said, I should not get into the flamefest I'm itching to; but Lojbab's characterisation is unfair. Robin had {ko'a mo'i ni'a catlu}, and that's a fairly literal gloss of "she looked down"; this is not engaging in obscurantism for the sake of it, and would indeed be the first thing anyone exposed to directional tenses would do with English directional adverbs. If you cannot do this with Lojban spatial tenses, and they indicate only locations and not orientations, then so be it; the offending phrase will be removed, and *perhaps* a caveat about this kind of thing will be inserted. (Although directional tenses are introduced cursorily as things now stand, so this may be beyond scope.) And if the Lessons are pitched at the wrong level, then I'm happy to let someone else take them over; they've taken three months as is, and I don't have the time for a radical rewrite. -- /||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||\ | "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||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||/ ()() ()() ()()