2.17 Tenses
Not all indicators indicate attitudes. Discursives, another group of cmavo with the same grammatical rules as attitudinal indicators, allow free expression of certain kinds of commentary about the main utterances. Using discursives allows a clear separation of these so-called “metalinguistic” features from the underlying statements and logical structure. By comparison, the English words “but” and “also”, which discursively indicate contrast or an added weight of example, are logically equivalent to “and”, which does not have a discursive content. The average English-speaker does not think about, and may not even realize, the paradoxical idea that “but” basically means “and”.
- Example 2.82
| mi | [cu] | klama | .i | do | [cu] | stali |
| I | - | go. | You | - | stay. |
- Example 2.83
| mi | [cu] | klama | .i | ji'a | do | [cu] | stali | added weight |
| I | - | go. | In addition, | you | - | stay. |
- Example 2.84
| mi | [cu] | klama | .i | ku'i | do | [cu] | stali | contrast |
| I | - | go. | However, | you | - | stay. |
Another group of indicators are called “evidentials”. Evidentials show the speaker's relationship to the statement, specifically how the speaker came to make the statement. These include za'a (I directly observe the relationship), pe'i (I believe that the relationship holds), ru'a (I postulate the relationship), and others. Many American Indian languages use this kind of words.
- Example 2.85
| pe'i | do | [cu] | melbi |
| I opine! | You | - | are beautiful. |
- Example 2.86
| za'a | do | [cu] | melbi |
| I directly observe! | You | - | are beautiful. |
2.17 Tenses
In English, every verb is tagged for the grammatical category called tense: past, present, or future. The sentence
- Example 2.87
- John went to the store
necessarily happens at some time in the past, whereas
- Example 2.88
- John is going to the store
is necessarily happening right now.
The Lojban sentence
- Example 2.89
| la djan. | [cu] | klama | le zarci |
| John | - | goes/went/will-go | to-the store |
serves as a translation of either Example 2.87 (p. 29) or Example 2.88 (p. 29), and of many other possible English sentences as well. It is not marked for tense, and can refer to an event in the past, the present or the future. This rule does not mean that Lojban has no way of representing the time of an event. A close translation of Example 2.87 (p. 29) would be:
- Example 2.90
| la djan. | pu | klama | le zarci |
| John | [past] | goes | to-the store |
