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

["Jorge J. Llambias" <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>]

>I personally have never tried to state the rules.  Perhaps Cowan has in
>the refgrammar.

I don't think so, but I haven't seen the last versions yet due to ftp-ing
problems at my end. I don't remember compound tenses as sumtcita being
discussed in the papers.

> I just know that given a sentence with puba'o I WILL
>come up with an interpretation, as I will for most grammatical Lojban.

So will I, but what if our interpretations differ? In the absence of
written rules, is your interpretation "better" than mine? If so, how
do I learn that interpretation? Do I have to ask you what each
particular case means?

(You don't always come up with an interpretation, though. When I use {ke'a}
outside a relative clause, in perfectly grammatical positions, you claim
to be unable to interpret. You also said that the mere possibility that
I might do so makes you unable to understand the normal use within
relative clauses.)

>I am not so stuck on my opinions as to call my interpretation "official" just
>because it comes from the mouth/keyboard of Lojbab.  But there are some
>interpretations I cannot get, and puza with za governing is one of them.

It is interesting that you accept that puza with za governing would be
different from puza with pu governing. I have been claiming that for some
time, i.e. that pu governs an origin and za governs a magnitude, but the
official position supposedly was that they were identical, i.e. that both
pu and za governed an origin.

>In other words give me a sentence and I will make a ruling based on MY
>instincts, but whether it is "official" I won't say.

That won't help me much then. I am not so much interested in that particular
case, I want to be able to figure out any combination. Anyway, here's an
example:

        mi puba'o citka le plise
        I had eaten the apple.

        mi ba'o citka le plise pu le nu do pu cliva
        I had eaten the apple before you left.

        mi ba'o citka le plise pu le nu do ba cliva
        I will have eaten the apple before you leave.

I think that those present no problems. Now for the controversial
ones (with my interpretations given):

        mi citka le plise puba'o le nu do pu cliva
        I had eaten the apple before you left.

        mi citka le plise puba'o le nu do ba cliva
        I will have eaten the apple before you leave.

In other words, I am applying the sumtcita just as if it were attached
directly to the selbri. I am curious as to what is the "instinctive"
interpretation.

>>My interpretation has always been the one given by Don, by the way.
>>I interpret {pu <sumti> za <sumti>} the same as {puza} as a selbri
>>tcita, only with added precision in the origin and the size of the shift.
>
>That is a possible interpretation, but it also has never been official,
>and I have never contemplated the possible idiosyncrasies that order
>might cause.

I hadn't much thought about order before, either, but I'm glad that
you accept it at least as a possible interpretation. Until now, it was
not accepted that the sumti of {za} be a magnitude.

> I would have thoughtt that {pu <sumti> za <sumti>}
>meant the same as {za <sumti> pu <sumti>} without thinking about whether
>"puza" means the same as "zapu"

"zapu" has a most strange meaning: In the past of some point that is
a medium time from now, either to the past or to the future.

>I am NOT a big fan of transformational
>Lojban - saying that two different grammatical structures are semantically
>equal - this should be clear by my unwilingness anymore to see "re broda"
>be locked into "re lo broda" with no implication of specificity, definiteness
>while having veridicality.  I just don;t see the naturalistic form as
>implying much of anything about logical properties.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do you disapprove of the distinction
that John proposes to make between {re broda} and {re lo broda}, or do
you think that that distiction is "naturalistic", whatever that means.
(I disapprove of the distinction, but for different reasons.)

>We also have "naku" which is NOT the same as "na" necessarily, and does have
>order considerations.

Right, the scope is different.

> We have had some discussions, but I can;t remember
>to what decision, about whether a  "pu le broda" as a sumti before the
>a selbri that is explicitly tensed means the same as one that is after, but
>I cannot remeber which - i.e. Is "mi pu broda" the same as puku mi broda
>or mi puku broda, where there may or may not be a difference if a tense is
>umm tensed sumti, is attached before or after the puku.

The examples you give are indeed equivalent, since they don't have enough
structure to show a difference, but at least the aspectuals do involve scope
considerations:

        mi ba'oku naku citka le plise
        I am in the aftermath of not eating the apple.
        (i.e. I am eating it.)

        mi naku ba'oku citka le plise
        I am not in the aftermath of eating the apple.
        (i.e. I have not eaten it.)

>In other words, there is a lot of stuff we haven;t talked about, which may or
>may not be in Imaginary JOurneys, probably SHOULD be if we can reach and
>agreement, but we may or may not have the time to fully analyze the issues.

Exactly! And whatever is not fully analyzed before publication, will continue
to be discussed afterwards. And whether we settle this particular issue or
not, there will certainly be other similar issues cropping up after the
grammar is published. (I'm not sure what brought about your change of
attitude towards change, though, since it is now you who is proposing
grammar changes!)

Jorge