Re: A question about space tenses

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

Lojbab:
>fa'a  in the same direction as some point
>to'o  in the opposite direction from some point
>zo'i  nearer to some point than X
>ze'o  farther from some point than X
>
>fa'a and zo'i are thus related and to'o and
> ze'o are related.

I'm glad I asked, because my understanding was quite off the mark.
I was taking fa'a and to'o to show orientation, not location. The
wording "in the same direction as some point" is ambiguous. It could
mean "oriented in the same direction as some point" or "located in
the same direction as some point". I thought fa'a was related to
farna, which supports the orientation definition.

It would be unfortunate that fa'a couldn't be used for orientation, as
there is no other cmavo for that function. For example, how would
we say:
        la djan zu'afa'a se flira
        John left-towards is faced.
        John is facing left.

or:
        la djan se flira fa'a le tricu
        John faces (towards) the tree.

>What is unclear is whether "some point" or "X" is the reference.

It must be "some point", if I understand your "ze'o la solri" example.
Now I remember that at some point ze'o and zo'i were supposed to mean
"trans" and "cis", but that's not what the new definition gives.

>I think that you are being seriously misled by using bajra as the predicate.
>FAhA without mo'i DOES NOT imply motion, only location.

I used bajra on purpose. I know that FAhA does not imply motion, the
motion in this case is intrinsic to bajra. I thought fa'a and to'o did
imply orientation though, but you are saying otherwise.

I still think that there is a problem with the way you want to use mo'i.
We should distinguish the motion of one of the arguments in a relationship
from the motion of the event as a whole. Tenses in general show properties
of the event, not of one of the arguments. An example from the refgrammar:

# 8.5)    mi mo'i ca'uvu citka le mi sanmi
#        I [movement] [front] [long] eat my meal.
#        While moving a long way forward, I eat my meal.
#
#(Perhaps I am eating in an airplane.)

I would say that the event of my eating the meal is moving forward,
rather than "I", I could just as well say that while the meal is
moving forward, it's being eaten by me, but it is not the sumti that
tenses modify, it is the event as a whole: the whole event of eating
takes place in a moving frame. The same would happen with someone
running inside the plane, the whole event of running would be moving
with the plane. If the plane is flying east, and the girl is running
towards the back of the plane, then the girl is running west, but the
event of running is moving east (as seen from the ground). The cmavo
mo'i can only refer to this latter motion of the event, not the motion
of the girl, if we are going to be consistent with the rest of the
tenses.

To indicate the direction of running, we only need give an orientation
to the whole event, the motion of the x1 sumti is already intrinsic
to bajra. The orientation of the event I thought could be done with fa'a.

>>        le nixli cu bajra ne'ifa'a le xamsi
>>        The girl runs inside-towards the sea
>>        (i.e. towards the inside of the sea, into the sea).
>
>The running is taking place inside of the sea,

Not necessarily. FAhAs are accumulative: you start you imaginary
journey at the sea, then you go inside of it, then fa'a either tells
you that that is the orientation of the running (my understanding),
or that the running happens somewhere between the speaker and
the inside of the sea (your understanding).

>and is towards the sea from
>the (default) speaker, who therefore is presumably NOT in the sea
>and is looking into the sea from the shore.

That would be ne'ijefa'a, both inside and towards, but I used ne'ifa'a:
towards the inside.

>>This is already too long, so I will leave my rant on the uselessness
>>of "mo'i" for another day.
>
>Perhaps it doesn't seem so useless once you remember that without it
>all events of running may be events of running in
> place, and the non-mo'i
>versions of FAhA do not change that.

Neither does mo'i change that. You could be running in place inside
an elevator, for example:

        mi ve'i mo'iga'u bajra
        I small-place upwardly moving run.

Whether you are running in place or not would be given by the VEhA.
Or you could be running in place inside an airplane

        mi ve'i mo'ica'u bajra
        I small-place forwardly moving run.

Just as in the case of the eating, the running is in-place inside
an airplane, because it is the whole event that moves forward.
I can only see mo'i as indicating movement of the whole event, as
all other tenses give properties of the whole event, not of one
particular sumti. That's why I think it is rather useless.

Many events require a direction to be specified. Events involving
movement of one of their sumti are a special case of that, perhaps
the most common, but there are others that still have an orientation
without movement. What is needed is some way to show the orientation,
not the movement.

Jorge