Re: perfective counting & katna

[jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU]

And:
> So {mi bai citka} = {mi bai da ku citka}?

[The {ku} is not grammatical there, {da} is a closed sumti. It should be
{mi bai da citka}.]

The equal sign might be too strong, but the senses of both phrases
are clearly the same: "I am forced to eat" and "I am forced by something
to eat".

In some cases, having the explicit {da} will bring in considerations
of scope. {le re prenu bai da citka} is not the same as {bai da le re
prenu cu citka}. It is not clear to me which of these is {le re prenu
bai citka} closer to, probably the first. {bai zo'e} may be a better
equivalence.

> pu broda = pu ku broda = pu dei ku broda
> bai broda = bai ku broda [is that grammatical?] = bai da ku broda
> zao broda = zao ku broda = zao ???? ku broda

{bai ku broda} is grammatical, but the {ku} is not grammatical in
*{pu dei ku} and *{bai da ku}.

It is not clear how {za'o} behaves as sumti tcita, since it hasn't
been used much as such. I would prefer that it be like {co'a} and
{co'u}, and not like {ba'o} and {pu'o}.

> Ah - but maybe I follow you. ZAHO, I gather, are similar to {fau},
> and {fau} is a BAI, so ZAhO are essentially like BAI. I wonder what
> the syntactic difference is between them.

Basically, that ZAhOs are combinable with other tenses to form compounds,
while BAIs are not.

> > Or to put it another way, {bai broda} could be seen as a shorthand for
> > {broda bai zo'e}, just as {pu broda} is short for {broda pu zo'e}
> Are you *sure* {pu broda} is short for {broda pu zo'e}? I think I'm
> fairly sure it's not. It's short for {broda pu dei}, which in turn
> is short for {broda fau lo purci be dei}.

If there was a {ki} in use, I think {pu} takes the reference from that
instead of from the time of utterance, but I'm not sure. In any case,
the sumti just makes the tag more precise. It is not as in the case
of {pu'o} and {ba'o}, where the tag simply has a totally different
effect when used as sumti vs. selbri tcita.

Jorge