Re: to'o

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

la lojbab cusku di'e

> No, my statement is that there is too much usage to have such a chhange be
> acceptasble.

In the Lojban text that appeared in Lojban list, there has been no use of
za and zu as tcita. One or two uses of zi, copying vi I think, where ca
would have been better. This is expected, since "some time to the past or
future of..." doesn't seem a concept needed very often.

No uses of vu, three uses of va, (two of which by me in the Quixote
translation, which I will remove next time I revise it) and quite
a number of uses of vi, but mostly contrary to the tense paper
interpretation.

> The tense system we have now is real complex.

I don't think it's that complex.

> I just read out of the grammar
> and use that to try to recall what we meant by the pieces.  "offset" seems
> pretty obvious though, and the FAhAs were put in to give offsets.

According to my Webster's, there are two (relevant here) meanings of
"offset": origin (archaic meaning) and displacement.

As I understand it, the FAhAs give the direction of the displacement,
and the VAs give the magnitude. Their sumti complements are (according
to the tense paper) always the origin of the displacement.

Since there is no way of giving a magnitude as a sumti, and since the
origin can already be given with the FAhAs, it seemed reasonable that
the magnitude be given by the VAs, which are precisely vague magnitudes.

If it can't be done with VAs, then shouldn't there be some alternative
to give more precise magnitudes?

Jorge