TECH: more on ZAhO

[C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK]

As indicated in my last mail on (my suggested) xa'o, I thought there was some
thought needed on ZAhO as sumti tcita.


My thoughts are these.

Tenses (including ZAhO) and simple tags (BAI)  can all be used in three
different circumstances, viz:

sumti tcita:
        mi cadzu ca li pano             I walk at 10 (o'clock)
        mi cadzu ca'o le vanci          I walk during the evening
        mi cadzu vine'i le panka        I walk in the park
        mi cadzu fe'eco'u le daplu      I walk to the end of the island
        mi cadzu bai le jatna           I walk compelled by the boss
        mi cadzu mu'i leli'i se zdile   I walk (motivated by) the enjoyment

selbri tcita
        mi ca cadzu                     I walk now
        mi ca'o cadzu                   I am in the middle of walking
        mi vine'i cadzu                 I walk, inside (not "I walk inside"
                                        which in the most obvious meaning of
                                        that would be"mi mo'ine'i cadzu")
        mi fe'eco'u cadzu               I am at the (spatial) end of my walk
        mi bai cadzu                    Compelled, I walk
        mi mu'i cadzu                   With some motive, I walk

jufra tcita
        .icabo mi cadzu                 At the same time, I walk
        .ica'obo mi cadzu               Throughout (that time/event) I walk
        .ivine'ibo mi cadzu             Inside (that), I walk
        .ife'eco'ubo mi cadzu           At the end (of that) I walk
        .ibaibo mi cadzu                Compelled (by that), I walk
        .isemu'ibo mi cadzu             For that reason, I walk

[There are also a couple more contexts that are I believe essentially the same
as jufra tcita: panrytergerna tcita, (connected phrase labels): .ecabo,
gi'ecabo, jecabo]

One reason for separating these three is that they are syntactically different
contexts, but then so are panrytergerna tcita. A more important reason is
that they are semantically different, in an unfortunately inconsistent way.

In the case of simple tenses, you can paraphrase the selbri tcita and
jufra tcita in terms of the sumti tcita, approximately:

        .icabo mi cadzu         =  .i mi cadzu ca la'e di'u
quite clearly; and
        mi ca cadzu     =  mi cadzu ca da

where the identity of "da" isn't totally clear, but is something like
"ti" or "le cabna".

With some of the other tcityma'o, the same is true: in the example, "vine'i",
and "bai" work that way. Unfortunately the remainder do not.

First, there is a plain inconsistency I have commented on before, motivated
as far as I am aware only by history:

        .imu'ibo mi cadzu
means
        .i mi cadzu semu'i la'e di'u

and
        .isemu'ibo mi cadzu
means
        .i mi cadzu mu'i la'e di'u

As indicated above, I believe that
        mi mu'i cadzu
means
        mi cadzu mu'i da
rather than
        mi cadzu semu'i da
but I have never seen a ruling on this.

The other is in my view a rather better motivated inconsistency, stemming from
the meanings of the words concerned (and mentioned in "Imaginary Journeys"):
ZAhO words are highly assymetric in their meanings, and it seems desirable
to let the different contexts mean different things.

Thus
        mi ba'o cadzu   =  I have been walking (and have now stopped)
but
        mi cadzu ba'o li pano = I walked after 10

I think (but am not certain) that
        .iba'obo mi cadzu = Afterwards, I walked.

Thus
        .iba'obo mi cadzu = .i mi cadzu ba'o la'e di'u
but the only way I can see to transform the selbri tcita is very indirect:

        mi ba'o cadzu = le cabna cu balvi lenu mi cadzu
- this is only approximate, and in any case does not work because "ba'o"
has a more precise meaning than "balvi".

This was my problem with "xa'o"/"pu'o". I was looking for a word to use as
selbri tcita, and so missed the fact that "pu'o" would do, but only as sumti
tcita.

I think this is a lack. What can be done about it?
I considered overloading "se" even further, thus

eg      mi ba'o cadzu = mi cadzu seba'o le cabna

but I'm not sure that this would work grammatically (it would need a change
anyway), and it conflicts a bit with SE BAI constructions - often, because
of the meaning of the BAI it does behave the same way, but that depends on
the place structure of the brivla

The 'solution' I have come up with is to use KU.  (I put solution in quotes
because it does not formally fill the need I describe, but I think it does
pragmatically.

Grammatically a tcita may stand alone as a sumti (though in most contexts it
needs a 'ku' to terminate it.  Thus

        mi cadzu ca
means
        mi cadzu ca da
I am not sure what the da is really, but pragmatically, it can often be
taken to be such things as
        le cabna
or
        ti
or
        la'edi'u
or
        zu'i            (the typical it)

So transforming the selbri tcita examples from above:

        mi caku cadzu                   I walk now
        mi vine'iku cadzu               I walk, inside
        mi baiku cadzu                  Compelled, I walk
        mi mu'iku cadzu                 With some motive, I walk
I think mean pretty much the same as their counterparts without "ku". But
with ZAhO:

        mi ca'o cadzu                   I walk during (it)
        mi fe'eco'u cadzu               I walk at the end (of it)

This will therefore meet my needs:

        mi pu'oku zbasu le ci patxu

        mi denpa pu'o li paso

        mi pu'oku ca nanca li cizepini'uso'u

I'm still not sure whether I can turn the fourth example round or not.


                        Colin


Lujvo and Tanru:
selbri tcita            selbri tag
jufra tcita             sentence tag
panrytergerna           panra te gerna = parallel grammatical structure
        "x1 is an arm of a binary connected structure x2, with connective x3"
tcityma'o    tcita cmavo  tag-word