belated ressponse to Jorge: bu'uvi

Responding to Jorge (delayed):
>la lojbab cusku di'e
>> Actually, having checked, "vi" is normally an ellipsis for "bu'uvi", and
>> "zi" an ellipsis for either "bazi" or "puzi".
>
>What does {bu'uvi} mean?  To me, adding a VA to {bu'u} makes as little
>sense as adding a ZI to {ca}.  They are allowed, because adding
>magnitudes makes sense with the other PUs and FAhAs, but semantically
>they don't make much sense.  What could be the meaning of {bu'uvi},
>{bu'uva} and {bu'uvu}?  Or of {cazi}, {caza} and {cazu}?

In English, when he say "here" or "at", or when we say "now", we often
to not mean exactly what we are saying.  Sit "at" the table means to sit
close to, but not necessarily so close to even be touching, the table.
When I tell my kid to do something "now", I do not mean that they
necessarily have to be doing it as I speak, but rather that there is a
certain probably small range of time in the near future that I expect
them to get started during - the action may continue some time into the
future.

To people outside the US, I can say that I live "in Washington DC",
though I live in a suburb 15 miles outside the city.  I thus live "vi"
the city to them.  To a local, though, I live "va" the city - I am not
that close; indeed anyone even a few miles further out has no direct
subway or bus connection into the city, and to city residents will be
considered "vu" the city.  VA and ZI are thus highly dependent on
circumstance and point of view.

>{vi} is not used as {bu'uvi}, at least I don't understand what {bu'uvi}
>means.  {vi} is used as the simple {bu'u}.

Unqualified "bu'u la Washington DC" means inside the city limits to me.

>> >        mi ba xruti zi lei mu mentu
>> >        I'll be back in five minutes.
>>
>> and I would just use "ba'o lei mu mintu" or more likely "ba'o le mintu
>> mumei".
>
>Yes, but they mean different things.  In my case, I'm saying that after
>the five minutes I will be back, but maybe I arrived before that.  You
>are saying that at some point after the five minutes you will be back,
>maybe one hour later.  Also, you have to assume that the five minutes
>are the ones that come right after now.  I grant you that that is
>probably quite grokable from context, but in other cases one might want
>the possiblity of being more precise.

I will grant that ba'o claims that you will not arrive before the 5
minutes.  I doubt that "zi" would help, since xruti is the returning and
not the state of being returned.

ba'o does NOT allow an hour to pass by in any normal context.
Perfective tenses are strongly tied to their events. ba'o means the
immediate aftermath of the 5 minutes, while that 5 minute period is
still clearly relevant to ones framework.  Very unlikely an hour from
now.

>Also, consider a slight variation:
>
>        mi ba xruti ba le nu ko'a xruti kei zi lei mu mentu
>        I'll be back five minutes after he's back.
>
>What do you do when you need to specify both the origin and the magnitude?

For exactitude:

mi xruti ba'o le mintu mumei pe ba'o lenu ko'a co'u xruti

I return in the aftermath of the 5-minute period after he finishes
returning.

I would probably actually just say "pe ba lenu ko'a xruti".

>>  But if "zi" was to be used as you suggest then
>> by correspondence "vi" as a tcita would have to label a distance.
>
>Yes, it would have to, but since {vi} is exceptional even now, my
>proposal doesn't really affect its status.  {vi le ckafybarja} should
>mean by the current interpretation "very close to the cafe", but it is
>understood to mean "at/in the cafe".  So, if we keep using it like that,
>it will be "wrong" whether my proposal is accepted or not.

When I say that Nora is "at the store", I do not know for sure that she
is inside the store premises.  She might be in the parking lot, etc.  We
commonly use "at" to mean "at or relatively near", and that is my
interpretation of "vi".

>> I don't understand lambda calculus in the least, but if the need in
>> lambda calculus is for more than one variable, THAT sounds like a good
>> use for a KOhA with subscripts.
>
>I certainly prefer a new KOhA to a new PA to do the job, but I doubt
>that it is worth it. Even in the examples I gave, {ke'a} could be
>ellipsized quite easily. When there is no {ke'a}, and one is needed
>to make things clear, the obvious assumption is that the {ke'a} goes
>in the first empty slot, so:
>
>        la djan zmadu la maris le ka dunda
>        John exceeds Mary as a giver.
>
>        la djan zmadu la maris le ka te dunda
>        John exceeds Mary in being given somnething.
>
>I don't really think it is a problem to use {ke'a} for this, and I hate
>to introduce a new cmavo that is probably practically never going to
>get used. However, if there is going to be one, then I'd much rather
>have it in {KOhA} space, and not as a modifier of {da}.

I'll second this.  I tend to want to avoid using "da" unless I wish to
explicitly invoke quantificational logic.

Chris:
>Lojbab:
>>and I would just use "ba'o lei mu mintu" or more likely "ba'o le mintu
>>mumei".
>
>But this depends heavily on the use of the intensional; we only know
>from context that it's the five mintues beginning in the present which
>precedes the act of returning.  Probably that's good enough most of the
>time, but it's funny that there's no reasonably concise way of talking
>logically and unambiguiously about time intervals.  How could we say
>this without depending on intensionality?  Difficult, because 1) there's
>no word for "now", and 2) there's no convenient way to talk about the
>span between two events.

Almost all use of tense is "intensional", as I am sure pc can confirm.
If you wish to be logically precise, make your claims about time as
separate logical claims.

"now" is "cabna ti", which I think even works in relativistic contexts,
since "ti" is associated with the speaker's point of view.

The time between two events can be specified precisely using temci and
the interval non-logical connective.  I covered this in my impromptu
response the other day.

lojbab