Re: A question about space tenses

[Iain Alexander <ia@stryx.demon.co.uk>]

In message <854331650.106093.0@vms.dc.lsoft.com> jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR writes:

> 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.

la djan. se farna le zunle
la djan. selfirfa'a le tricu

> 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.

You could always say e.g.

        mi ne mo'i ca'uvu citka le mi sanmi

if you want to talk about the position or movement of an individual sumti.

> 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.

Perhaps, but it looks like we're stuck with using the gismu
{farna} for that.
--
Iain Alexander                    ia@stryx.demon.co.uk
                    I.Alexander@bra0125.wins.icl.co.uk
--
Iain Alexander                    ia@stryx.demon.co.uk
                    I.Alexander@bra0125.wins.icl.co.uk