Re: sera'aku GEN: almost-PROPOSAL: intervals

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

la bob. tcySEL. cusku di'e

>     la djan. klama la glazgov. pu la maris.
> 
>     John goes/went/will-go to Glasgow in the past of Mary.
> 
>     John went to Glasgow before Mary.

Beware, malglico alert!  The argument of "pu" is an event, so this means that Mary is an event.  By 
convention, if "Mary" has its usual meaning as a person's name, the "event of a person" is the 
person's entire existence from birth (or before) to death (or beyond).  The above example does 
>not< mean that "John's going to Glasgow precedes Mary's going to Glasgow" which demands either "le nu ... cu purci le nu ..." or the shorter "pugi la djan. gi la maris. ..."

> Utterance 1.
> ===========
> 
>    >> > >mi klama la glazgov. puza lo nanca belipimu
> 
> translates as:
> 
>     I go/went/will-go to Glasgow in the past of, by a medium temporal
>     distance, a 1/2 year.
> 
> That is to say,  the time when I go to Glasgow is
> a medium time before some 6 month period.

That is indeed what IJ says; the question is whether it would be useful to change it so that a 
sumti tcita ending in "za" governs a specific time distance sumti, allowing sumti tcita ending in 
"pu" to continue to govern the origin point.  A comparable process would allow ZEhA sumti tcita to 
govern a specific interval size sumti.  (Ditto for space, of course.)