Re: ta'e/na'o

[Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>]

la djan cusku di'e

> la kolin. cusku di'e
>
> > ta'e is about actual habits.
> > na'o is about the typical behavour.

The mailserver here has been misbehaving lately (if anyone sent me
something to my account and I didn't respond please try again) so
I didn't receive Colin's post, but the bit that John quotes doesn't
tell me much. Actual habits and typical behaviour seem to me to be
much the same thing. Or is a habit a "conscious" typical behaviour?
I don't see why that should be specified at this level.


> Here's my current formulation, from Revision 3.18 of the tense paper:
>
> # The four TAhE cmavo are differentiated as follows:  "ru'i" covers the
> # entirety of the interval, "di'i" covers the parts of the interval which are
> # systematically spaced subintervals; "na'o" covers part of the interval,
> # but exactly which part is determined by context; "ta'e" covers
> # part of the interval, selected with reference to the behavior of the
> # actor (who often, but not always, appears in the x1 place of the bridi).

We discussed this before in private, but here again are my objections to this.
If there has to be an actor for ta'e to make sense, and if when there is
an actor, the two are almost indistinguishable, what's the point of having
two of them? Can anyone come up with sentences that differ only in this
word, and mean something different from each other?

Jorge