10.25. Explicit magnitudes
It is a limitation of the VA and ZI system of specifying magnitudes that they can only prescribe vague magnitudes: small, medium, or large. In order to express both an origin point and an exact distance, the Lojban construction called a
“termset” is employed. (Termsets are explained further in
Section 14.11 and
Section 16.7.) It is grammatical for a termset to be placed after a tense or modal tag rather than a sumti, which allows both the origin of the imaginary journey and its distance to be specified. Here is an example:
Here the termset extends from the
nu'i to the implicit
nu'u at the end of the sentence, and includes the terms
la djordj., which is the unmarked origin point, and the tagged sumti
lo mitre be li mu, which the cmavo
la'u (of selma'o BAI, and meaning
“with quantity”; see
Section 9.6) marks as a quantity. Both terms are governed by the tag
zu'a
It is not necessary to have both an origin point and an explicit magnitude: a termset may have only a single term in it. A less precise version of
Example 10.189 is: