>{ba'o crepu ca lo nunso'o} should mean harvesting finished happening in the past

No, it should mean that the harvesting finished at the time of planting, nothing is said about the past.

>{crepu ba'o lo nu sombo} definitely means harvesting ended before a planting.

... ended (and after the planting started). Why {ba'o crepu ca lo nu sombo} is not equal?

>>1609

If {ba'o crepu} means harvesting finished in the past, and {crepu ca lo nunso'o} means harvesting is happening at the same time as planting, then {ba'o crepu ca lo nunso'o} should mean harvesting finished in the past, and was happening at the same time as planting.

I've discussed this a couple of times on IRC now, and I keep running into the same blank "No, this means X, not Y" without a consistent underlying system, plus misunderstandings due to the changes between the CLL and BPFK interpretations of ZAhO. So, I thought I'd try to summarize the CLL and BPFK tense and aspect systems, so we'd all be on the same page. (It's also possible there's a mistake in my understanding of the basics, and that's why I'm having so much trouble. If so, please point out my error(s).)

Each tense tag represents an imaginary journey from an origin point to an end point. When the tag is on a selbri, the origin point is zo'e, often meaning the time/place at which the speaker/writer spoke/wrote. The temporal journey is represented by a sequence of PU ZI pairs (direction + duration). The ZAhO expresses where the journey ends in relation to the selbri event. E.g., {co'a} means the journey ends at the beginning of the selbri event, and {ca'o} means the journey ends in the interval between the beginning and end of the selbri event.

In both the CLL and BPFK, {ca ba'o broda} (zo'e is in the aftermath of broda) is similar in meaning to {pu co'u broda} (journey from zo'e towards the past to reach the end of broda).

When a tag is on a sumti, the origin point is the sumti instead of zo'e, and the end point is still the selbri event. Under CLL, ZAhO expresses where the journey begins in relation to the sumti, so {broda ca ba'o ko'a} means broda is in the aftermath of ko'a, and is similar in meaning to {broda ba co'u ko'a} (journey from the end of ko'a towards the future to reach broda). Under BPFK, ZAhO again expresses where the journey ends in relation to the selbri event, so {broda ca ba'o ko'a} means ko'a is in the aftermath of broda, and is similar in meaning to {broda pu co'u ko'a} (journey from ko'a towards the past to reach the end of broda).

Under BPFK, {broda ba'o ko'a} means ko'a is in the aftermath of broda, {ba'o broda} means zo'e is in the aftermath of broda, and {broda ca ko'a} means ko'a is simultaneous with broda. http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Aspect claims {ba'o broda ca ko'a} == {broda ba'o ko'a}. I believe {ba'o broda ca ko'a} == {ba'o broda} AND {broda ca ko'a}.

>http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Aspect claims {ba'o broda ca ko'a} == {broda ba'o ko'a}. I believe {ba'o broda ca ko'a} == {ba'o broda} AND {broda ca ko'a}.

I think the problem is that you are reading ZAhO as if they were tenses, but they are not tenses, they are aspects. They don't tell you anything about when something happens, at least not directly, they only tell you which part of an event you should be focusing on. In this context, the aftermath (and the "beforemath") are to be considered as "parts" of the event in question.) PU is what tells you "when". So "ZAhO broda PU ko'a" tells you when the "ZAhO" part of broda happens with respect to ko'a. With "ba'o broda" we are not concerned about when the "ca'o" part of broda happens, only about when the "ba'o" part happenns. (The fact that the ca'o part always comes before the ba'o part is indirect information that we have from our knowledge of how things happen, it's not part of what we are stating, we are only stating when the ba'o part occurs.)

> I think the problem is that you are reading ZAhO as if they were tenses, but they are not tenses, they are aspects.

I am reading ZAhO as though they tell where the imaginary journey ends in relation to the selbri event. That is all.

> "ZAhO broda PU ko'a" tells you when the "ZAhO" part of broda happens with respect to ko'a.

I disagree. If it were {broda PU ZAhO ko'a}, then yes, your statement would be correct. But I view {ZAhO broda PU ko'a} as two separate tense/aspect tags, one relating {ko'a} to {broda} (and, incidentally, omitting the ZAhO part of the tag), and the other relating {zo'e} to {broda} (and, incidentally, omitting the PU part of the tag). Attempting to combine the two tags, somehow, leads to a plethora of special cases depending on whether the two tags are compatible with each other or not, and makes it more difficult to express many simple situations without making it any easier to say anything.

If I want to express {broda ZAhO zo'e PU ko'a}, I should be able to say {ZAhO broda PU ko'a}, exactly in parallel to the way I can express {broda PU zo'e PU ko'a} as {PU broda PU ko'a}. (See >>1608 for examples.)

>> "ZAhO broda PU ko'a" tells you when the "ZAhO" part of broda happens with respect to ko'a.
>I disagree. If it were {broda PU ZAhO ko'a}, then yes, your statement would be correct. But I view {ZAhO broda PU ko'a} as two separate tense/aspect tags, one relating {ko'a} to {broda} (and, incidentally, omitting the ZAhO part of the tag), and the other relating {zo'e} to {broda} (and, incidentally, omitting the PU part of the tag).

So you are reading "ba'o broda ca ko'a" as "ba'o broda ca [co'i] ko'a" while I'm reading it as "ba'o broda ca [ba'o] ko'a", right?

For me it's easier to assume that the aspect that has been omitted from the sumti tag is the very one that has been mentioned in the selbri tag ("ba'o" in this case), rather than one that has not been mentioned in this sentence ("co'i"), even if "co'i" is the obvious choice when no aspect is mentioned at all.

> So you are reading "ba'o broda ca ko'a" as "ba'o broda ca [co'i] ko'a" while I'm reading it as "ba'o broda ca [ba'o] ko'a", right?

If I understand you correctly, you're reading {ba'o broda ca ko'a} as {broda ca ba'o ko'a}, and just ignoring the {ba'o zo'e} part, or assuming (harmfully) that the zo'e is ko'a. I've already mentioned that I read {ba'o crepu pu'o lo nunso'o} as meaning "harvested after planting", i.e., the zo'e is in the aftermath of the harvesting, and the planting is in the "beforemath" of the harvesting. So, yes, I'm reading the {ca ko'a} part as {ca [co'i] ko'a}, but the whole thing is more like {ca ba'o zo'e broda ca co'i ko'a}. If I wanted to express {broda ca ba'o ko'a}, that's exactly the text I'd use.

>>1620

You seem to believe {ZAhO broda} is very different than {PU broda}; that ZAhO does more than define the temporal relationship between a reference point and the broda event; that {lo co'a broda} means {lo broda krasi} instead of {lo broda poi ca cfari}.

As far as I can tell, {ba'o broda} differs from {pu broda} only in that the latter event may have continued on into the present. {ba'o broda} does not make any statements about the aftermath of broda; it's identical in meaning to {pu co'u broda}, that is, it narrows the possible referents to events that finished in the past.

Note: after some thought, I realized assuming {pu [ca'o] broda} is much more sensible than assuming {pu [co'i] broda}. Otherwise "{ba broda} does not imply {canai broda}" wouldn't make sense. http://dag.github.com/cll/10/6/

>>1621

>You seem to believe {ZAhO broda} is very different than {PU broda}; that ZAhO does more than define the temporal relationship between a reference point and the broda event;

That's exactly right, they are very different. ZAhO is an aspect marker, it is not about temporal relationships between an event and a reference point, it's about selecting an aspect, a stage, a part, a phase, a facet of an event.

> that {lo co'a broda} means {lo broda krasi} instead of {lo broda poi ca cfari}.

It's neither. It's "lo nu broda", not "lo broda", the one that cfari.

>As far as I can tell, {ba'o broda} differs from {pu broda} only in that the latter event may have continued on into the present. {ba'o broda} does not make any statements about the aftermath of broda; it's identical in meaning to {pu co'u broda}, that is, it narrows the possible referents to events that finished in the past.

The difference between "ca ba'o carvi" and "pu co'u carvi" is that one is a statement about the present situation and the other one is a statement about something that happened in the past. It's basically the same difference that exists in English between "it has rained" and "it finished raining".

> Note: after some thought, I realized assuming {pu [ca'o] broda} is much more sensible than assuming {pu [co'i] broda}.

"pu ca'o carvi" corresponds (roughly) to English "it was raining" while "pu co'i carvi" corresponds (roughly) to "it rained". One describes an event as it unfolds, the other describes an event as a whole without considering its development.

I think the natural "default" aspect is "ca'o" when the tense is the present, and "co'i" when the tense is not the present, but that's not a real default, more like a tendency and it depends a lot on the context.

> Otherwise "{ba broda} does not imply {canai broda}" wouldn't make sense. http://dag.github.com/cll/10/6/

"ba carvi" is a stetement about the future and does not imply anything about the present. If I sat "it will rain", I'm not saying anything about whether or not it is raining now, although without more context I would assume it isn't, or I might say "it will keep raining instead". But if the present is irrelevant, I might just focus on the future and imply nothing about the present.

uonaisai ro'e. There are several things you said I want to argue about, but we're getting way off track.

I see ZAhO solely as specifying where the imaginary journey, described by the PU ZI pairs in the same tag, ends in relation to the main event. You, apparently, think there's an additional implication that all other tags are now going to be assuming the same ZAhO applies by default.

If {ba'o broda ca ko'a} means what I think it means, then the speaker is in the aftermath of broda, and ko'a (thought of as a point event) is coincident with broda. If it means what you think it means, then ko'a is in the aftermath of broda, and I'm uncertain whether you think the speaker is also in the aftermath of broda or whether you think nothing is implied about the speaker. I think we both agree that {broda ba'o ko'a} means ko'a is in the aftermath of broda and nothing is implied about the temporal location of the speaker.

How would you express precisely that the speaker is in the aftermath of broda and ko'a happened during broda? {pu broda ca ko'a} doesn't work, because it doesn't rule out broda continuing into the speaker's present.

>>1623

>I see ZAhO solely as specifying where the imaginary journey, described by the PU ZI pairs in the same tag, ends in relation to the main event. You, apparently, think there's an additional implication that all other tags are now going to be assuming the same ZAhO applies by default.

No, I'm all against defaults.

I said that if the sumti tag has no explicit ZAhO, the obvious choice of aspect, barring some context that suggests otherwise, is the one already mentioned.

>If {ba'o broda ca ko'a} means what I think it means, then the speaker is in the aftermath of broda,

We don't really know where the speaker is in "ba'o broda", since it could be "ca ba'o broda", "pu ba'o broda" or "ba ba'o broda", and even those are not guaranteed to be related to the speaker. "ba'o broda" has no explicit tense and so does not allow us to place the event in relation to the speaker. "ca ba'o broda" may be a frequent choice, with the speaker at the origin, but not a forced one.

> and ko'a (thought of as a point event) is coincident with broda. If it means what you think it means, then ko'a is in the aftermath of broda, and I'm uncertain whether you think the speaker is also in the aftermath of broda or whether you think nothing is implied about the speaker.

The latter.

>I think we both agree that {broda ba'o ko'a} means ko'a is in the aftermath of broda

Yes, that's the difference with CLL.

> and nothing is implied about the temporal location of the speaker.

Right.

>How would you express precisely that the speaker is in the aftermath of broda and ko'a happened during broda?

I suppose something like:

nau [ja'a] ba'o broda ca ca'o ko'a

("ja'a" is just a trick to make it grammatical, since the current grammar does not allow combining "nau" with "ba'o" directly.)

"nau ba'o broda" says that the brodaing is now over, and "ca ca'o ko'a" says that it was happening at ko'a.

In practice I don't think I have ever used more than a single aspect for the same bridi, except for "co'a" and "co'u" in "co'a ko'a co'u ko'e", "from ko'a till ko'e".

>{pu broda ca ko'a} doesn't work, because it doesn't rule out broda continuing into the speaker's present.

In fact unless you use "nau" you can never be sure where the speaker is located with respect to the event being described.

> No, I'm all against defaults.

You can't have it both ways. Either {ba'o broda ca ko'a} == {broda ba'o ko'a} and there are defaults, or there aren't and they aren't equivalent statements. If you stick with the "no defaults" philosophy, then the set of real-world situations describable by {broda ca ba'o ko'a} is, at most, a strict subset of the set of real-world situations describable by {ba'o broda ca ko'a}, and {broda ba'o ko'a} doesn't guarantee the {ca ko'a} part, so it, at most, has a non-empty intersection with {ba'o broda ca ko'a}.

> I said that if the sumti tag has no explicit ZAhO, the obvious choice of aspect, barring some context that suggests otherwise, is the one already mentioned.

It isn't obvious to me. Quite the opposite really, since if you split the tag in two (which makes understanding the temporal relationship more difficult), pragmatics implies the two aspects are likely to be different.

> In practice I don't think I have ever used more than a single aspect for the same bridi

I've had to use more than one many times to accurately translate English. E.g., "X happened after Y" vs "X happens after Y" vs "X is happening after Y" vs "X will happen after Y".

>>1625

> You can't have it both ways. Either {ba'o broda ca ko'a} == {broda ba'o ko'a} and there are defaults, or there aren't and they aren't equivalent statements.

They aren't strictly equivalent statements.

>If you stick with the "no defaults" philosophy, then the set of real-world situations describable by {broda ca ba'o ko'a} is, at most, a strict subset of the set of real-world situations describable by {ba'o broda ca ko'a},

Yes, in theory yes.

> and {broda ba'o ko'a} doesn't guarantee the {ca ko'a} part, so it, at most, has a non-empty intersection with {ba'o broda ca ko'a}.

Right, but the negligible part is (in my view) what stays outside the intersection.

>> I said that if the sumti tag has no explicit ZAhO, the obvious choice of aspect, barring some context that suggests otherwise, is the one already mentioned.
>It isn't obvious to me. Quite the opposite really, since if you split the tag in two (which makes understanding the temporal relationship more difficult), pragmatics implies the two aspects are likely to be different.

Aspects are not about temporal relationships. The natural place for an aspect (from my point of view) is as selbri tcita, not as a sumti tcita. So for me the splitting is from the selbri, not from the PU. So in "ba'o broda" there is no splitting, while in "broda ba'o ko'a" the aspect has been split from the selbri.

>> In practice I don't think I have ever used more than a single aspect for the same bridi
>I've had to use more than one many times to accurately translate English. E.g., "X happened after Y"

"pu [co'i] broda ba lo nu [co'i] brode"

> vs "X happens after Y"

"[co'i ta'e] broda ba lo nu [co'i] brode"

> vs "X is happening after Y"

"[ca] ca'o broda ba lo nu [co'i] brode"

>vs "X will happen after Y".

ba [co'i] broda ba lo nu [co'i] brode

In all of those, the "after" is clearly "ba", not an aspect.

>> Either {ba'o broda ca ko'a} == {broda ba'o ko'a} and there are defaults, or there aren't and they aren't equivalent statements.

> They aren't strictly equivalent statements.

Alright! That's the main thing that was bothering me. I'm glad to see we agree they aren't equivalent statements. Will you be updating http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Aspect ?

Incidentally, the first example on that page has a small error: either the {ze'a} should be replaced with {pu za} or the translation should be "The years-long war is over, but the pain is still with us.", since {ze'a} specifies the duration of the main event, not the length of the imaginary journey to reach the event. If you think {ze'a} can specify the duration of the aftermath when the main event is tagged with {ba'o}, then {ze'a ko'a co'a broda} would be equivalent to {ze'a ko'a broda krasi} instead of {ze'a ko'a cfari broda}. (You've already said the latter is better than the former. >>1622)

>>1627

>Alright! That's the main thing that was bothering me. I'm glad to see we agree they aren't equivalent statements. Will you be updating http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Aspect ?

I changed the "==" to "(approximately)==". I suppose I could try to find an "approximately equals" symbol but I don't know if it will display properly in all browsers.

>Incidentally, the first example on that page has a small error: either the {ze'a} should be replaced with {pu za} or the translation should be "The years-long war is over, but the pain is still with us.", since {ze'a} specifies the duration of the main event, not the length of the imaginary journey to reach the event. If you think {ze'a} can specify the duration of the aftermath when the main event is tagged with {ba'o}, then {ze'a ko'a co'a broda} would be equivalent to {ze'a ko'a broda krasi} instead of {ze'a ko'a cfari broda}. (You've already said the latter is better than the former. >>1622)

I think "ze'a" specifies the duration of the aftermath stage:

ze'a ko'a ba'o broda
(approximately)== ko'a krafamtei lo nu ba'o broda

ze'a ko'a co'a broda (approximately)== ko'a krafamtei lo nu co'a broda

I don't think I used the lujvo "cfari broda" or "broda krasi" in describing "co'a broda". I think the best reformulation of "co'a broda" is "lo nu broda cu cfari" (and similarly for all other ZAhO, although "co'a" is the only one that has a nice gismu to go with it).

>>1628

Right. This is some of the stuff I didn't want to argue about because it was distracting from the main point... but now that's sorted out, I guess we might as well have at it.

I'm fairly certain {ze'a co'a broda} means that broda is beginning now (i.e., the reference point, whatever that is, is coincident with the beginning of broda) and broda has a medium (or unspecified, whichever interpretation you use) duration. Note that I think the ZEhA specifies the duration of the whole event, not the duration of its beginning. In short, I believe when a ZEhA and a ZAhO appear in the same tag, the combined meaning is the intersection of the meanings of the solitary ZEhA and the solitary ZAhO, not "select the ZAhO part of the event, then use the ZEhA to describe the duration of that part of the event."

Statements like "Aspects are not about temporal relationships." seem utterly nonsensical to me (assuming you mean ZAhO where you wrote "Aspects"). Of course ZAhO are about temporal relationships. They specify where the imaginary journey ends relative to the event being discussed (in the aftermath, at the beginning, in the middle, at the end, etc.). They very much resemble English tenses, unlike PU. http://dag.github.com/cll/10/6/

>>1629

>I'm fairly certain {ze'a co'a broda} means that broda is beginning now (i.e., the reference point, whatever that is, is coincident with the beginning of broda)

I don't think "co'a broda" really says anything about time. It only says that broda is beginning, but not when. It may be that "now" is usually the most obvious time, but that's not part of what is being stated. "co'a broda" also doesn't say that the beginning is coincident with the reference point. "ca co'a broda" says that, but "pu co'a broda" says the beginning is before the reference point, and "ba co'a broda" says the beginning is after the reference point. "co'a broda" does nothing to respond "when?", only PU does that.

> and broda has a medium (or unspecified, whichever interpretation you use) duration.

"co'a ze'a broda" is the beginning of medium/unspecified duration broda. "ze'a co'a broda" is a medium/unspecified duration beginning of broda.

> Note that I think the ZEhA specifies the duration of the whole event, not the duration of its beginning.

I think it depends on the order. The first has scope over the second.

>Statements like "Aspects are not about temporal relationships." seem utterly nonsensical to me (assuming you mean ZAhO where you wrote "Aspects").

Aspects are temporal properties of an event, but not temporal relationships to something else. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_aspect

The Wikipedia description is fairly good: " Aspect can be a difficult concept to convey and understand intuitively. Because they both convey some sense of time, aspect is often confused with the closely-related concept of tense. While tense relates the time of a situation to some other time, commonly the time of speaking, aspect conveys other temporal information, such as duration, completion, or frequency, as it relates to the time of action. Thus tense refers to temporally when while aspect refers to temporally how. Aspect can be said to describe the texture of the time in which a situation occurs, such as a single point of time, a continuous range of time, a sequence of discrete points in time, etc., whereas tense indicates its location in time."

>"Of course ZAhO are about temporal relationships. They specify where the imaginary journey ends relative to the event being discussed (in the aftermath, at the beginning, in the middle, at the end, etc.). They very much resemble English tenses, unlike PU.

English does not separate tense and aspect as well as Lojban does, but it can still be said to have one morphological mark of tense and two morphological marks of aspect. The tense mark is the past -ed ending (for most verbs, its equivalent for irregular ones). The aspect marks are the "BE -ING" and "HAVE -EN" constructions, which can also be combined into "HAVE BEEN -ING".

Of course English is not as regular as Lojban, but these English marks roughly correspond to "pu", "ca'o" and "ba'o".

(English also uses the auxiliary "will" that corresponds to "ba", but in English it belongs to a different system than "pu".)

The only way you can say that ZAhO resembles English tenses better than PU is if you are calling "BE -ING" and "HAVE -EN" tenses rather than aspects.