Re: A question about space tenses

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>As far as (1) goes, the baselined refgrammar isn't decisive. It has
>no examples using fa'a or to'o, and the short definitions it gives
>--More--
>can be interpreted either way. The definition lojbab gave is also
>ambiguous, and though the explanation he gives obviously refers to
>the location definition, I think it would be worth going back to
>the original orientation one. (The origin of fa'a is from farna,
>clearly, and that is even in the refgrammar.)

The etymology is from farna indeed, with the presumed meaning "in the
direction of" which seems locative, rather than "facing" which is orientative,

I don;lt think we ever considered an orientative tense.  We did something
with BAI, I think to allow stating an orientation, but I cannot remember what
it was.  The main argument for locative interpretation is indeed that of
the refgrammar, since the whole "Imaginary Journeys" metaphor is locative i
in paradigm.

>As for (2), I'm not overly concerned, since I dislike both
>possibilities. Making mo'i show the movement of one sumti is
>inconsistent with how the rest of the tenses work. Making it
>show the movement of the whole event (in an airplane, train,
>elevator, or whatever) is rather silly. It is not something
>that I would want to specially grammaticalize. So I am not
>likely to be using mo'i in any case. (The refgrammar in this
>case has examples for each of both interpretations.)

In which case things are ambiguous.  But I would presume that showing
motion in a sumti would be done using "pe" or "ne" rather than with a
tense on the bridi.

lojbab