Re: tense conversions

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>]

>> >         le bolci pu'o farlu le loldi le jubme
>> >         The ball is about to fall to the floor from the table.
>>
>>         .i do cusku lu pu'o .ue farlu fa le bolci li'u
>>
>> >         i mi kavbu le bolci le xance ja'e le nu by na farlu
>> >         I catch the ball with my hand so that it doesn't fall.
>>
>> I have added one more sentence between yours to illustrate my idea - in the
>> _story_ time your was beliving that ball (inchoative) falls, but this claim
>> (prediction) became false because of your own action.
>
>I don't believe that claim is false, it was a faithful description of
>the world. The ball was actually about to fall. If I had said
>{le bolci ba farlu}, then yes, that claim would be false, because in the
>future of the claim, the ball didn't fall.

At time T1 the ball was rolling towards the edge of the table, and Jorge
says "le bolci pu'o farlu".  At T2, Cyril catches it, and calls Jorge a liar :-)

In English it's perfectly natural to say, even in retrospect, that the ball
was "about to" fall off the table.  But is that really logical?  We know
that the ball was in a state prior to an event of catching, but observers at
T1 wrongly guessed that an event of falling was in the future.  Now at T2 we
can safely say that {ca T1 le bolci pu'o se kavbu}.  Can we also say that
{ca T1 le bolci pu'o farlu}?  Should pu'o mean "about to ..." or "is in a
state prior to the claimed event of ..."?  Either answer could probably be
workable and consistent, but I think I favor Cyril's interpretation.

In other words, I think "le bolci pu'o farlu" means "the ball will start
falling", not "the ball is about to fall".  "le bolci ba farlu" means "the
ball will be falling (and may or may not already be falling)".