`already'

[Ivan A Derzhanski <IAD@BGEARN.BITNET>]

On Thu, 21 Dec 1995 00:31:15 -0500 Jorge Llambias said:
>> >PS1:  Instead of {ca} I would have preferred to use the proposed new
>> >ZAhO for "already".
>> bapu'o or ba'opu'o ???
>
>bapu'o = will be about to.
>
>[ca]ba'opu'o = has been about to.
>
>Neither of those has the meaning of "already".

I vote against a specific ZAhO for `already'.  It is not an aspectual
operator; it is orthogonal to the ZAhO scale ({pu'o} appears to be the
only ZAhO whose meaning is incompatible with the idea of alreadiness).

There's a lot of linguistic work on `already' and its cousins `still'
and `finally' (I could provide references; there was a detailed study
by J van den Auwera in _Linguistics and Philosophy_ about 2 years ago),
and there's a lot of controversy, but people seem to agree that they
characterise the event or state as taking place respectively sooner,
longer and later than it might (than anticipated, than on some other
occasion etc.) (ignoring a host of derived meanings).  I think we
should be able to express such things by means of attitudinals.

--Ivan