Re: [lojban] Opposite of za'o
Jorge Llambias
la ivAn cusku di'e
>You explain and explain --> the audience
>understands.
Right, once the audience understood, what goes on after is
just going through the motions. You can also be going through
the motions before the audience even begins to understand,
before the "natural beginning" of the explanation, "he was
explaining the problem for too long before starting to
explain it".
>You put brick
>on brick --> a house makes an appearance.
You excavate and then fill up the holes, you move the bricks
form here to there, you build a wall and tear it down, lots
of building activity but no sign of the house yet.
>Hence my
>interpretation of {za'o}: process continues after its effect
>is obtained.
And it has a counterpart in a process that occurs before its
effectiveness kicks in.
co'o mi'e xorxes
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
And Rosta
> For me as a native speaker, "still" sometimes but not always carries the
> expectation that the event should no longer be happening. Examples:
> A. Is he still talking? I wish he'd shut up. (expectation)
> B. Am I too late to get the special price? No, the sale is still
> going on. (no expectation)
[snipped examples for the rest of the stil/already quadrangle]
At some point earlier in this thread, Ivan pointed out that "still/already
p" asserts p and contrasts it with not-p. (More exactly, still-p contrasts
with ba'o-p and already-p contrasts with pu'o-p [assuming I remember the
cmavo right].) Often, not-p ~ ba'o-p/pu'o-p is positively unexpected,
but sometimes it is contextually salient for other reasons. For your
"the sale is still going on", the speaker is, as you say, not expecting
the sale not to be going on, but the previous utterance has made the
sale's not-going-on contextually salient.
Similar remarks would apply to words like "continue/keep/stay".
My point is essentially that we have an explicit understanding of the
meaning of still/already, as provided by Ivan.
--And.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get a NextCard Visa, in 30 seconds!
1. Fill in the brief application
2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds
3. Get rates as low as 2.9% Intro or 9.9% Fixed APR
http://click.egroups.com/1/6630/4/_/17627/_/963628675/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-un...@onelist.com
Jorge Llambias
>We've already agreed that
>"still" could be rendered by a brivla, so this discussion
>is about whether you can say what you want using ZAhO.
I agreed {stali} was a pretty good brivla for "still".
I haven't found a good one for "already" though. {tolstali}?
{clira}?
>If I
>had my way then most redudant cmavo would be abolished,
>though, including ZAhO.
If I had mine I would abolish lots of selmaho too, but
I don't think I would start with ZAhO.
> > But za'o is permitted with non-telics too, so the
> > generalization to "still" is the next step.
>
>I think {za'o broda} entails that broda is telic, just as {mo'u}
>does. So if {broda} is not normally telic, the interpreter has
>to seek an interpretation where broda is telic.
In seeking that interpretation is that I usually run into
"still".
>You have this ideal conception of what Lojban ought to be like,
>from a user's perspective, and struggle and struggle to find ways
>to make Lojban yield some realization of this conception. To me,
>Lojban is how it is, and you like it or lump it.
To me Lojban will be what we make it. If you try to use it
I think you have to realise that at least for now and in some
sense Lojban still isn't.
Jorge Llambias
> > 1- An event happening when it should no longer be happening.
>
>Fine. And by what standard should it no longer be happening?
A purely contextual. There is something about the situation
being described that makes the happening of the event to
contrast with a situation where it no longer is happening.
>All these `still'-like categories imply the following things:
>
>(a) a current positive state (if something still is, it is),
>(b) an earlier positive state (for something to still be,
> it must have been),
>(c) an assumed later negative state (you don't think of things
> as still being if they are going to last for ever),
Right, I think we all agree about those three components.
>(d) a hypothetical current negative state, which is contextually
> salient in some way or the other, but it may or may not be
> someone's expectation, may or may not have been likely, may
> or may not be what should be, etc. (a natlang may express
> some of these things by choosing one form or another; Lojban
> would probably use attitudinals for this purpose, eg `still
> not' may be `not yet' + <impatience>, <surprise> or the like).
Well, this is the key component, of course. I don't attitudinals
help here. Attitudinals, as I understand them, express the
reaction of the speaker to some situation, they reflect how
the situation affects the speaker. What "still" expresses is
a property of the situation independent of how it affects the
speaker. The speaker may well feel impatient that some situation
is _still_ going on. But the situation would still be "still"
whether or not the speaker feels impatient about it.
>{le ctuca pu za'o ciksi le seldanfu le tadgri}.
> (They had understood it already.)
>`The teacher was still explaining the problem to the class.'
> (Very likely they hadn't yet.)
>
>The expressions `expected (?) end point' and `natural end'
>may sound kind of similar, but the concepts are different.
>(Whorf is observing all this from his cloud, and smiling.)
Right, "still" is much less specific than strict {za'o}.
But {za'o} is still the only ZAhO that has at least a whiff
of this (d) component. And since {za'o} is grammatical even
with events that are not very telic, its extension into
"still" territory seems to me almost unavoidable. Unless
some better solution comes along, of course.
>Lojban's ZAhO, for example, ignore intensity and focus on the
>existence of a process or event and the causal links between them.
{pu'o}, {co'a}, {ca'o}, {co'u}, and {ba'o} focus on that.
{mo'u} and {za'o} add another parameter, the culmination point,
that focuses on more than simple existence.
{de'a} and {di'a} add yet another parameter, interruption.
And {co'i} must probably add something else, but I don't know what.
>The question is then: Having chosen those fundamental parameters,
>does it offer a complete system built upon them?
Wrell, we are missing at least the aspect for the period
between {de'a} and {di'a}. {ba'ode'a}? {pu'odi'a}? what about
the neutral one between those two?)
>and it seems
>to me that Lojban's system is indeed complete, in that if one
>wants to augment it, one has to add another dimension.
Maybe, but the dimension symmetric to "culmination" would
be a reasonable first candidate.
> > I do. I can think of many events with a natural starting point
> > that doesn't always coincide with the actual starting point.
>
>What do you have in mind?
le ctuca pu xa'o ciksi le seldanfu le tadgri
The teacher was talking and talking about
the problem but not getting to the point.
co'o mi'e xorxes
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Life's too short to send boring email. Let SuperSig come to the rescue.
http://click.egroups.com/1/6137/4/_/17627/_/963674038/
Jorge Llambias
> > za'o - "still"
> > pu'o - "not yet"
> > ca'o - "already"
> > ba'o - "no longer"
>
> still = "ca'o, not ba'o"
> not yet = "pu'o, not ca'o"
> already = "ca'o, not pu'o"
> no longer = "ba'o, not ca'o"
Ok, that's nice. I was not yet considering the contrasts
at that point.
>Presumably "ca'o, not ba'o" can quite easily be rendered into
>Lojban, and I seem to recall this already having been done in
>your exchange with Ivan.
No, I think we hadn't discussed {ca'o jenai ba'o}. Of all the
non-za'o proposals, this one is the one I like best. I still
feel it is missing an indication that the first part is the
actual claim and the second part is the denial of the
presupposition, but maybe that's too much to ask for.
>But the only reason why the continuation of za'o broda is
>unexpected is that events that instantiate a telic event type
>*normally* cease once the telic event type has been instantiated.
Exactly. But za'o is permitted with non-telics too, so the
generalization to "still" is the next step.
>I think you're going down the garden path with za'o. The solution
>to your requirements is Ivan's -- the one I've given above.
Maybe you're right. I really don't like {je} with tenses,
but I will keep it in mind.
[natural end vs. completion]
>But those concepts aren't implied if you think in terms of "intrinsic
>boundaries", i.e. an event counterpart of the count/mass distinction
>we're familiar with from English nouns (though not from Lojban selbri).
Very nice parallel!
>Put another way, it is no coincidence that in words for beginnings
>there is no counterpart of the stop/finish distinction.
start/commencement?
Is it just a matter of telic/non-telic?
And Rosta
> >Presumably "ca'o, not ba'o" can quite easily be rendered into
> >Lojban, and I seem to recall this already having been done in
> >your exchange with Ivan.
>
> No, I think we hadn't discussed {ca'o jenai ba'o}. Of all the
> non-za'o proposals, this one is the one I like best. I still
> feel it is missing an indication that the first part is the
> actual claim and the second part is the denial of the
> presupposition, but maybe that's too much to ask for.
Too much to ask for from a ZAhO. We've already agreed that
"still" could be rendered by a brivla, so this discussion
is about whether you can say what you want using ZAhO. If I
had my way then most redudant cmavo would be abolished,
though, including ZAhO.
> >But the only reason why the continuation of za'o broda is
> >unexpected is that events that instantiate a telic event type
> >*normally* cease once the telic event type has been instantiated.
>
> Exactly. But za'o is permitted with non-telics too, so the
> generalization to "still" is the next step.
I think {za'o broda} entails that broda is telic, just as {mo'u}
does. So if {broda} is not normally telic, the interpreter has
to seek an interpretation where broda is telic.
> >I think you're going down the garden path with za'o. The solution
> >to your requirements is Ivan's -- the one I've given above.
>
> Maybe you're right. I really don't like {je} with tenses,
> but I will keep it in mind.
You have this ideal conception of what Lojban ought to be like,
from a user's perspective, and struggle and struggle to find ways
to make Lojban yield some realization of this conception. To me,
Lojban is how it is, and you like it or lump it.
> [natural end vs. completion]
> >But those concepts aren't implied if you think in terms of "intrinsic
> >boundaries", i.e. an event counterpart of the count/mass distinction
> >we're familiar with from English nouns (though not from Lojban selbri).
>
> Very nice parallel!
The earliest, anteantepenultimate version of *my* doctoral thesis was
on this sort of thing. It was working on semantics that in the end made
me do syntax instead.
> >Put another way, it is no coincidence that in words for beginnings
> >there is no counterpart of the stop/finish distinction.
>
> start/commencement?
Sort of. Not exactly enough for me to say Yes.
> Is it just a matter of telic/non-telic?
Is what? The stop/finish distinction? Yes. -- Said with due deference
to pc & Ivan, the pukka experts.
--And.