Re: "late"

la matius. cusku di'e

> I discovered "lerci" in the gismu list before asking the question in the
> previous post, but concluded that it meant "late" as in "late delivery".  It
> seems to me that "late" meaning "at an hour somewhere vaguely between 9.00pm
> and 4.00am" and "late" meaning "delayed; after the expected time" are two
> different concepts (saying "We met at a late hour" doesn't imply that the
> hour was delayed in arriving :-)
> 
> So, is there a link between these two meanings that I'm missing?

I think that these are both "lerci", but with different x2's implicit.
The latter is the simpler case: the x2 is simply an event, with respect
to which x1 is late.  So in the case of a "late delivery", it is late
with respect to the (non-existent) event of expected delivery.

However, the x2 can be vaguer than an event; it can be a cultural or
personal standard.  So "lerci be mi" means "late by me", as in

	ca le purlamdei mi cikna lerci mi
	Yesterday I was up late.

A "late hour" is clearly more cultural than personal; we could speak of
"lerci be loi merko", e.g.

A modest change from "by standard x2" to "relative to event x2/by standard x2"
would be worthwhile for both "lerci" and its partner "clira".

-- 
John Cowan		sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.