Subject: Looking down: executive summary?

From: Nick NICHOLAS <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 18:10:08 -0700 (PDT)

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.

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