{fa'a} and expressing "towards" in Lojban.

[gleki]

Robin and I have been talking about {fa'a}.

<rlpowell> Assume for the moment that {fa'a do} definitely means "facing you"; i.e. it's about direction/orientation, and not about movement or something else.

<rlpowell> So {mi klama pu tu'a do} =~ {lo nu mi klama cu purci tu'a do}, right?

<rlpowell> Oh, also assume that *farna* is about facing/direction/orientation, which is much less clear.

<rlpowell> So I think that {mi klama fa'a do} means, approx, {lo nu mi klama cu se farna do}

<rlpowell> i.e. "the event of my going, as a whole, faces you".

<rlpowell> Which, generally speaking, is a pretty remarkably useless concept.

<rlpowell> But I can't see how to make it mean "I go towards you" or "I'm facing you as I go" without raping the tense system with a buffalo. In a recent poem it was said something like {ko'a catlu fa'a lo canko} - "He looked in the direction of the window"  as opposed to {ko'a catlu lo canko} - "he looked at the window".

As for me, i perceived farna as a vector. fa'a = having a vector oriented towards...

Before commenting please read http://dag.github.com/cll/10/28/
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Directional+Spatial and the previous discussion at http://www.lojban.org/tiki/fa'a%20as%20orientation.

So two questions
1. How to say "go towards..."?
2. What fa'a really means or should mean?

[Escape Landsome]

> <rlpowell> So I think that {mi klama fa'a do} means, approx, {lo nu mi klama
> cu se farna do}
> <rlpowell> i.e. "the event of my going, as a whole, faces you".
> <rlpowell> Which, generally speaking, is a pretty remarkably useless
> concept.

The event of going has an intrinsic (but most often unused) face.
This face is the face of an imaginary person who would act the
aforementioned going.

Let I make myself clearer : when you say (in english) : << The guys
began to drink, and, ten beers later, they were totally drunk. >>, you
do as if << ten beers >> had a duration property. You use the
intrinsic duration property of "ten beers" to say "ten beers later".

That seems odd, because "a day", "a year", "a symposium", "a speech"
have intrinsic duration property, but how could "a beer" have one ?
The fact is it has. That's because "a beer" is connected to usual
actions a beer leads to, such as to drink it, mostly, and "the
drinking" has a duration property.

It is up to lojban grammarians to decide if broda, in the general
case, has intrinsic properties, or not. If it has, this makes the
creation of simple sentences much more easy. If not, this may be
more light on a logical level (on a pragmatic one, in fact), but
sentences will be more difficult to combine.

[gleki]

And there is the same problem with {to'o} which looks like the opposite of {fa'a}.

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Directional+Spatial  gives the example

ki'u ma lo do gerku cu bajra to'o do

"Why does your dog run away from you?"

Why not teka'a?

And what is the relation between {to'o} and {tefa'a}?

[Pierre Abbat]

On Sunday 24 June 2012 06:57:18 gleki wrote:
> And there is the same problem with {to'o} which looks like the opposite of
> {fa'a}.
> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Directional+Spatial gives the
> example
> ki'u ma lo do gerku cu bajra to'o do"Why does your dog run away from you?"

> Why not teka'a?And what is the relation between {to'o} and {tefa'a}?

"lo gerku cu bajra to'o do' means that the dog is away from you where he runs.
To indicate that he runs away from you, say "mo'i to'o".

"teka'a" is also correct, but it's a proper preposition, adding a place, not a
tense marker. "fa'a", being a tense marker, can't take "te".

Pierre

--
loi mintu se ckaji danlu cu jmaji

[selpa'i]

Am 24.06.2012 15:05, schrieb Pierre Abbat:
> hy not teka'a?And what is the relation between {to'o} and {tefa'a}?
>
> "lo gerku cu bajra to'o do' means that the dog is away from you where he runs.
> To indicate that he runs away from you, say "mo'i to'o".

{to'o do} says that the event is oriented away from {do}. Since bajra
contains motion already, you don't need {mo'i}, and in fact, it would
mean something else entirely with {mo'i}: "The [event of the] dog
running is moving away from you", which might mean that the dog is
running in whatever direction while being on a train that is moving away
from you.

{lo gerku cu bajra to'o do} is therefore the correct way to say it.

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

--
.i pau mi me ma .i pa mai ko mi jungau la'e di'u
.i ba bo mi va'o lo nu nelci lo nu me ma kau cu barkla
.i va'o lo nu na nelci cu denpa ti lo nu mi drata

[Jorge Llambías]

On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 5:36 AM, Escape Landsome <esca...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The event of going has an intrinsic (but most often unused) face.
> This face is the face of an imaginary person who would act the
> aforementioned going.

Yes, although it's not necessarily the face of the person. If someone
walks backwards from A to B, the direction of going is still towards
B, even though the person is facing towards A. The intrinsic
orientation of the going is from origin to destination. Many events in
which something moves have an intrinsic orientation, which is the
direction of movement. Other events with obvious intrinsic orientation
but not about movement are looking and talking.

Using "fa'a" with "klama" is somewhat redundant because "klama"
already has a slot for the destination (although sometimes the
direction of going can be different from the destination at some
points of the going, when the going is looked at in enough detail so
it does not happen in a straight line). But with "cadzu" or "bajra" it
makes perfect sense: "mi bajra fa'a do" -> "lo nu mi bajra cu se farna
do".

mu'o mi'e xorxes

[Jorge Llambías]

On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 7:57 AM, gleki <gleki.is...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And there is the same problem with {to'o} which looks like the opposite of
> {fa'a}.
> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Directional+Spatial  gives the
> example
> ki'u ma lo do gerku cu bajra to'o do"Why does your dog run away from you?"

> Why not teka'a?And what is the relation between {to'o} and {tefa'a}?

The dog may be running away from you without having started from where
you are. "to'o" indicates direction only, "te ka'a" indicates where
the going starts.

[Robin Lee Powell]

I agree, and to clarify, {mi bajra fa'a lo snanu} is perfectly valid
if you're facing north; it doesn't say anything about the facing *of
the speaker*, which is how people have been using it, or about the
facing of any particular object in the bridi.

I also think {mi bajra fa'a mo'i lo snanu} makes a lot more sense
for "I run south", by the way.

It also seems to me that {fa'a X} ard {fa'a moi Y} could maybe be
different, but the event would need to somehow have a clear and
natural facing that the motion could then be in a different
direction from.

The original context was using {mi dundu ti fa'a do} to mean "I give
ti towards/to you", which is definitely wrong; the fa'a has nothing
to do with the ti, and even if it did, I can certainly place
something on a table away from you and say {mi dunda ti do}, since
dunda is about possession in the abstract and not about handing you
something, IMO.

So, how *do* we walk about the facing of objects in a bridi?

-Robin

--
http://singinst.org/ : Our last, best hope for a fantastic future.
.i ko na cpedu lo nu stidi vau loi jbopre .i danfu lu na go'i li'u .e
lu go'i li'u .i ji'a go'i lu na'e go'i li'u .e lu go'i na'i li'u .e
lu no'e go'i li'u .e lu to'e go'i li'u .e lu lo mamta be do cu sofybakni li'u

[Jorge Llambías]

On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Robin Lee Powell
<rlpo...@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
>
> I agree, and to clarify, {mi bajra fa'a lo snanu} is perfectly valid
> if you're facing north; it doesn't say anything about the facing *of
> the speaker*, which is how people have been using it, or about the
> facing of any particular object in the bridi.

Right.

> I also think {mi bajra fa'a mo'i lo snanu} makes a lot more sense
> for "I run south", by the way.

To me that means that the running takes place on a train heading
south, or something like that. I don't think "mo'i" should be used
just to indicate that one of the arguments of the bridi is in
movement. I don't see much use for "mo'i" really.

> So, how *do* we walk about the facing of objects in a bridi?

Not sure what you mean. If you mean "this faces that" ("this is
oriented towards that", "this is directed towards that") then "ti se
farna ta".

mu'o mié xorxes

[selpa'i]

Am 24.06.2012 20:08, schrieb Robin Lee Powell:
> The original context was using {mi dundu ti fa'a do} to mean "I give
> ti towards/to you", which is definitely wrong; the fa'a has nothing
> to do with the ti, and even if it did, I can certainly place
> something on a table away from you and say {mi dunda ti do}, since
> dunda is about possession in the abstract and not about handing you
> something, IMO.

{mi dunda ti fa'a do} means "The event of me giving this (to somebody)
is faced towards you." This does not tell us who the recipient is, so it
is different from {mi dunda ti do}.

> So, how *do* we walk about the facing of objects in a bridi?

You can simply use NOI and NE:

{.i mi noi se farna do cu dunda ti do}
or: {.i mi ne fa'a do cu dunda ti do}

{.i mi dunda ti noi se farna }
or: {.i mi dunda ti ne fa'a mi do}

etc. for all the other possible permutations.

Similarly for "I walk towards you, but backwards", you can do one of the
following:
.i mi cadzu fa'a do fau lo nu mi to'e se farna do
.i mi noi to'e se farna do cu cadzu fa'a do
.i mi fau lo nu lo crane cu trixe cu cadzu fa'a do
etc.

[Robin Lee Powell]

On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 03:19:12PM +0200, selpa'i wrote:
> Am 24.06.2012 15:05, schrieb Pierre Abbat:
> >hy not teka'a?And what is the relation between {to'o} and
> >{tefa'a}?
> >
> >"lo gerku cu bajra to'o do' means that the dog is away from you
> >where he runs. To indicate that he runs away from you, say "mo'i
> >to'o".
>
> {to'o do} says that the event is oriented away from {do}. Since
> bajra contains motion already, you don't need {mo'i}, and in fact,
> it would mean something else entirely with {mo'i}: "The [event of
> the] dog running is moving away from you", which might mean that
> the dog is running in whatever direction while being on a train
> that is moving away from you.
>
> {lo gerku cu bajra to'o do} is therefore the correct way to say
> it.

Hmmm.

This contradicts what I just posted, but what you say makes sense.

The problem that I have with it is that it means that {to'o} and
{mo'i to'o} mean different things depending on whether or not the
underlying bridi is inherently about motion. Upon further
reflection, I don't think that's OK.

Hmm. Upon further further reflection :), it's also not *true*;
{to'o/fa'a} calls upon the intrinsict directionality of the event,
no matter what event it is; some have it, some done. {mo'i
fa'a/to'o} moves the entire event around in real space, regardless
of the event's intrinsic anything.

*Interesting*.

[selpa'i]

Am 24.06.2012 20:48, schrieb Robin Lee Powell:
> Hmm. Upon further further reflection :), it's also not *true*;
> {to'o/fa'a} calls upon the intrinsict directionality of the event,
> no matter what event it is; some have it, some done. {mo'i
> fa'a/to'o} moves the entire event around in real space, regardless
> of the event's intrinsic anything.
>
> *Interesting*.
>
> -Robin

I think this sums it up quite well. =)

[Robin Lee Powell]

On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 09:01:19PM +0200, selpa'i wrote:
> Am 24.06.2012 20:48, schrieb Robin Lee Powell:
> >Hmm. Upon further further reflection :), it's also not *true*;
> >{to'o/fa'a} calls upon the intrinsict directionality of the
> >event, no matter what event it is; some have it, some done.
> >{mo'i fa'a/to'o} moves the entire event around in real space,
> >regardless of the event's intrinsic anything.
> >
> >*Interesting*.
> >
> >-Robin
>
> I think this sums it up quite well. =)

I thought so too, which is why the relevant bpfk section now links
there. :D

[gleki]

On Sunday, June 24, 2012 10:23:24 PM UTC+4, selpa'i wrote:

Am 24.06.2012 20:08, schrieb Robin Lee Powell:
> The original context was using {mi dundu ti fa'a do} to mean "I give
> ti towards/to you", which is definitely wrong; the fa'a has nothing
> to do with the ti, and even if it did, I can certainly place
> something on a table away from you and say {mi dunda ti do}, since
> dunda is about possession in the abstract and not about handing you
> something, IMO.

{fa'a} refers to {dunda}, not to {ti}. Otherwise you need {be} being added.

{mi dunda ti fa'a do} means "The event of me giving this (to somebody)
is faced towards you." This does not tell us who the recipient is, so it
is different from {mi dunda ti do}.

I completely agree.  {mi dunda ti fa'a do} is a more ambiguous way to say {mi dunda ti do}.

Although in most (not all !) cases context will tell that both sentences denote the same.