Re: THEORY ago (was: Most common irregular verbs?)

On 1/17/06, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> A more interesting question to me is this: how does Lojban do it?
Apparently, the official method as put down in the reference grammar
is fairly complicated.

A proposed method in the current effort to properly define all parts
of the language and how to use them is to use za/zi/zu + time period
(za indicates a generic temporal displacement, zi a small temporal
displacement, and zu a large temporal displacement).

I asked how to say "Three days ago, I went to the store" and was given
the suggested sentence {mi pu klama le zarci za lo djedi be li ci} (I
PAST go the store TIME-DISPLACEMENT the day LINK No. 3 -- something
like "I went to the store with time displacement from reference point
= 3 days").

To indicate displacement in the future, the phrase {za lo djedi be li
ci} would be the same; the future offset could be indicated by context
or, for example, by using {ba} instead of {pu} in front of the selbri
(predicate relation -- roughly, the "main verb" in this case).
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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