Re: TECH: Mark Shoulson waiting for a taxi

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

> > > I think this is another case of sumti-raising.  What you are really
> > > waiting for is {lo nu klama lo karcrtaksi}.
> > >
> > > mi'e .i,n.
>
> la .and. cusku di'e
> > True enough, but it doesn't solve the non-specificity problem,
> > does it? If the inception of nu klama [fa?] lo karcrtaksi
> > happens, but Mark wasn't waiting for it, the utterance could
> > still be true, whereas we want it to be false in such a
> > circumstance.
>
> I'm sorry, I seem to have lost the thread somewhere.  If
>
>         la mark. denpa lo nu klama fa lo karcrtaksi
>
> how can the event happen without Mark waiting for it?

Will it could happen without mark waiting for it
If mark were waiting for a specific event, and the one
that happens is not the one he was waiting for. Now the
use of _lo_ rather than _le_ rules out this interpretation,
but your example means (or can be paraphrased as) "There is
some event of a taxi going, such that mark is awaiting it" -
this would be appropriate if we knew Mark was going to
be waiting for a taxi, but didn't know which one he was
waiting for. But we need more than this; we need our
statement to be falsified if an event of a taxi's coming
along happens and Mark is not awaiting it. So I provisionally
offer:

      la mark. denpa loi nu klama fa lo kartcrtaksi

> Perhaps you think this isn't tight enough, and I could probably
> agree with that.  I think there are parts of the language that
> we don't exercise often enough at the moment, and one of those
> is the different flavours of NU, so I usually try and find an
> alternative to {nu} itself.  I often find {za'i} works well
> for things which are anticipated (desired, waited for etc.),
> so perhaps this should be {lo za'i ba'o klama}.

It may indeed by appropriate to add in NUs & ZAHOs, but it is
not relevant to the bits of meaning I was tussling with.

------
coho, mihe lahola. And la.