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On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Jorge Llambías wrote:
> la maten cusku di'e
> > > http://www.lojban.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=81
> > I can see both interpretations of ZAhO as sumtcita make sense, but (1)
> > is the one I've always understood. Also, I'd suggest the usage of
> > ba'o/pu'o as sumtcita with (1) is more frequent than (and so trumps) the
> > usage of co'a/co'u with (2). Isn't it?
>
> It's hard to say. In my usage it is not, because I simply don't
> use ba'o/pu'o as sumtcita. The main problem with that interpretation
> is that it requires that {<tag> selbri} not be equivalent to
> {<tag> zo'e selbri}. ZAhOs would be the exception to the rule.
>
I can see the appeal of this, but it's too big a change for me. If I had
a vote, I'd vote against it.
> > > See also:
> > > http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Internal+grammar+of+tags
> >
> > Hmmm. I don't know about this idea of flattening out the tense grammar.
> > As it stands, the grammatical structure more or less reflects the
> > semantic structure - which I'd have thought was a Very Good Thing.
>
> Why is {co'a na'o broda} "starting to typically broda" allowed, but
> not {na'o co'a broda} "typically starting to broda"? How does one
> reflect semantic structure more than the other?
Sorry? They're both grammatical in the current grammar, but {co'a na'o
broda} falls foul of what CLL says about ZAhOs coming last. Is that
what you meant?
And what that reflects is the tense model which I thought was the
official one (though I'm less sure now) and which is at least a
plausible one - you define (considering just time for simplicity) an
interval, then a subset of that interval with TAhE and PAroi, and then
how that subset relates to the event of the bridi(/seltcita sumti,
preferably, though apparently that does contradict CLL) with ZAhO and
PAre'u.
If you want to use ZAhO in a different way (as in your translation of
{co'a na'o broda}), then that's cool - as long as it's part of a general
scheme which gives meaning to this class of tenses ({ZAhO TAhE}, or
preferably {ZAhO (tense as above)}). That's all I'm saying, and that's
what I don't see happening, and is what I was clumsily attempting with my
JOI1 thingy.
I guess this is basically the prescriptivist-naturalist (is that what you
guys call it?) debate again - the alternative to prescribing an
understandable model for construction and interpretation of tenses being a
lawless breeding-ground for confusion and malrarbau, with people just
using the keywords to translate to and from lojban - rather than
translating directly to and from the spatio-temporal locations of events.
IMO. I just think we can and should do better.
Now whether we actually declare phrases which don't fit our models to be
unparsable or just meaningless, I don't see much matters. But having a
the set of meaningful words being easily decidable (by brains as well as
machines), such as is assured by making it part of the formal grammar,
would be particularly nice.
> > So how does this work with a full tense rather than just a fragment of
> > one? What would
> > {loi snima cu carvi pu zi ze'a ba'o le ca dunra}
> > mean, for instance?
>
> First you'd have to tell me what {loi snima pu zi ze'a ba'o carvi}
> means. Your sentence is very similar, but with the current winter
> as reference, instead of an implicit one. I would take it to mean
> that a short time ago, for a medium interval of time, it had snowed
Hmm, same here. But how does that fit in with {carvi ze'a le ca dunra}
*not* being the same as {ze'a carvi}-with-the-winter-as-reference? I
don't see how you can reasonably make a special case out of ZAhO, with
it having a different meaning when part of an explicitly expressed tense
like the above. Whatever CLL says.
> (then I suppose it must have started to snow again, otherwise how
> would you know that the aftermath lasted a medium interval and will
> not a last for a long one?).
I think the implications of this lead to a contradiction of CLL and
common usage, but I can't seem to find the words to express it right
now. Sorry. I might try again later.
Martin