completeness of actions is not defined in most gismu

[gleki]

As it's usually not defined in English words.

Let's take {jgari}. Is it "I grasped something" or "I was continuously holding something"?

Although ca'o and mo'u I don't understand their default meaning without extra event contours.

[.arpis.]

It can mean either. It can also mean "I will grasp something" or "I
will have grasped something" or "I had been grasping something", and
that's assuming that it's obvious from context that "I" am the one
doing the grasping.

{mi ca'o jgari} means that the event you're talking about is
continuous, e.g. "I am grasping", but without an additional _tense_
tag (e.g. {ca}, {pu}, or {ba}) you don't know without context whether
the event is in the present, past, or future.

{mi mo'u jgari} means that you're talking about the end of the event
of you grasping something. Again, it is not specified whether this
event is in the present, etc.

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mu'o mi'e .arpis.

[Jorge Llambías]

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 2:01 PM, .arpis. <rpglover...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> {mi mo'u jgari} means that you're talking about the end of the event
> of you grasping something. Again, it is not specified whether this
> event is in the present, etc.

I think the question was what exactly constitutes the end of an event
of jgari. What happens right after "mi mo'u jgari lo plise lo xance"?
Is the apple now firmly in my hand, or have I just dropped it? Does
jgari describe a state or a change of state?

The problem is that the English words used to describe it are
ambiguous. "Hold" describes a state, while "seize" describes a change
of state ("take hold"). When I finish holding an apple, I no longer
have it. When I finish seizing it, I am holding it. "mo'u jgari" could
describe the end of the state, the end of holding, so that after that
I'm no longer holding, or it could describe the completion of the
change of state, so that after that I have completed the seizing, the
taking hold of, and so I'm holding it.

There are many words like this one, where the English gloss doesn't
make clear whether they describe a state or a change of state. In such
cases, I think it's better to take them as describing a state, because
the change of state is easier to derive from the state than the other
way around.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

[gleki]

OK. May be all such gismu are ambiguous about the stage of the process.

And we need to use event contours more frequently.