Re: Event contours and ZAhO tcita

[jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU]

VILVA@VIIKKI21.HELSINKI.FI writes a lot of stuff I agree with:

> The purpose of ZAhO tcita - or of any sumti tcita - is to
> reinsert a sumti place which has been 'deleted' from the
> definition of a gismu (or a selbri).

Jimc says: the deep structure which a BAI phrase represents is this:
Suppose we say for example

        mi citka sepi'o lo smuci        I eat with a spoon

There is a gismu associated with almost every BAI (but not ZAhO's)
and etymologically related to it, in this case {pilno = use}.
The BAI phrase is interpreted by jimc to mean a restrictive relation,
in the style (but not the syntactic connections) of a subordinate
clause with poi, through that gismu between the containing bridi
and the phrases's sumti, as in

        zo'e pilno lo smuci lo nu mi citka
                A spoon is used for me to eat with

except that the containing bridi remains the focus of assertion, not
the transformed bridi with the BAI gismu, in the style of a restrictive
subordinate clause.

So how do we interpret a ZAhO in this framework?  While ZAhO's don't
have official related gismu, they are associated with some kind of
predicate relation, though I'm not going to try to whip out various
jvajvo for them :-)  When used as a sumti tcita, a ZAhO such as {ba\'o}
signifies that this relation applies restrictively between the main
bridi and the argument.  This relation can be whatever we define it
to be.  For example, John Cowan recently interpreted {ba'o} to
mean "main bridi is a portion of the argument process and is in its
aftermath phase", whereas I think Veijo is saying that he swallows
only part of this definition: "main bridi is coincident in time with
the aftermath phase of the argument process".

In either case, it's clear, as Veijo says, that the contoured event
is the argument, and if the main bridi has a contour you can't infer
it from the BAI phrase.

Jorge Llambias recently expressed confusion with Lojbab's saying that
ZAhO as a sumti tcita is backwards from ZAhO as a tense.  Interpreted
through the above deep structure the reversal becomes clear.

        (bridi) ZAhO (sumti)    means
        (bridi) is in the (ZAhO) phase of process (sumti)

whereas

        ZAhO (bridi)            (used as a tense) means
        (bridi) is in the (ZAhO) phase of (itself as an extended process)

where the word "means" includes caveats above about the focus of
assertion.  In the second version the main bridi (considered extendedly)
is the process which has phases, whereas in the first version some
other sumti is the process that has phases.

So how can one assert a phase of an event while simultaneously
contemplating the event-process in its entireity?  I think it's
time for me to get back to work :-)

                -- jimc

Glossary (places which might well be deleted indicated with #)
citka           x1 eats x2
smuci           x1 is a spoon for use x2 made of x3#  (with intended
                        content x2, as with soup -- or should x2 be
                        "event of (who?) eating soup"?)
se pi'o         BAI for the tool used to do the containing bridi
pilno           x1 uses (tool) x2 for (purpose) x3