What is the time?
One way to ask the question "What is the time?" is ma tcika ti. We know that ma is the sumti question word ('what'), so tcika must be a selbri meaning 'is the time'. The place structure of tcika is
x1 (hours, minutes, seconds) is the time of state/event x2 on day/date x3, at location x4, by calendar x5
So in Lojban, times do not exist in the abstract: times are always the times of something. So we ask what the time is of ti, meaning 'this event/thing', or, in other words 'now'.
One way to ask the question "What is the time?" is ma tcika ti. We know that ma is the sumti question word ('what'), so tcika must be a selbri meaning 'is the time'. The place structure of tcika is
x1 (hours, minutes, seconds) is the time of state/event x2 on day/date x3, at location x4, by calendar x5
So in Lojban, times do not exist in the abstract: times are always the times of something. So we ask what the time is of ti, meaning 'this event/thing', or, in other words 'now'.
