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On Sun, 6 Oct 2002, And Rosta wrote:
> Xod:
> > Naturally, I find the fact that there are no natlang analogs to xoi'a
> and
> > xoi'e (especially with respect to a direct treatment of "linear" and
> > "exponential" functions) a very Good Thing.
>
> But for something that needn't be expressed by a cmavo but could be
> expressed by a lujvo instead, isn't the evidence of natlangs useful
> in suggesting which concepts are needed often enough to warrant
> being expressed by a cmavo?
Lojban has introduced the concept of the "grammatical orthogonality" of
tense and statement; the tenses can be inserted into statements at will,
without grammatically affecting the rest of the statement. And in a sense,
conceptually, the idea of tense is a meta-comment on the statement and
shouldn't really have impact its structure. If you can't appreciate the
clean elegance here, I can't say much more than this, and several rounds
of debates about it won't help anyone. But this is why I think these
concepts really should be tenses and not (only) lujvo.
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