Re: [long] Re: On the tense system

[Nick Nicholas <nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU>]

The Seraphim surely rejoiced when Logical Language Group spoke thus:

#This works semantically, but isn't something that people grasp on their own.
#I am undecided right now whether to teach it the way I think it or to watch
#how people who actually have a perfective system in their native language
#do teh teaching (I gained a much more thorough grasp of ZAhO when I
#learned Russian and relaized the usefulness of perfectives, especially when
#contrasted with the aorist ca/pu/ba, which I think have been malglico overused
#in historical Loglan and Lojban (Older Loglan versions had only the barest hint
#of a perfective system and it was a poorly analyzed copy of either the
#English or Esperanto system - I'm not sure which).

Just as an aside, Esperanto authors' usage of the language's equivalents
of ZAhO was analysed once, and it was discovered that Hungarian authors
used them twice as often as Slavic authors, who in turn used them three
times as often as French authors. (I can dig up the precise statistics on
request). No prizes for guessing how Hungarian handles event contours.

*******************************************************************************
 A freshman once observed to me:         Nick Nicholas am I, of Melbourne, Oz.
 On the edge of the Rubicon,             nsn@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au (IRC: nicxjo)
 men don't go fishing.                   CogSci and CompSci & wannabe Linguist.
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