Re: Your first sentence

[cowan (John Cowan)]

nsn@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au (Nick S. Nicholas) writes:

> >     "dei mi pamoi jufra fi la lojban"
> 
> Well, close, but... {mi} is always a sumti and never a selbri, right? Now in
> tanru, you can smash together selbris, and if needed stick a LE word in front
> and call it a sumti. you can also stick a mi next to the LE word. So
> lemi pamoi jufra befila lojban.
> (my first sentence in lojban)
> is fine. But here, {pamoi jufra} is a selbri, and {mi} is not considered a 
> part of the tanru, but a sumti in itself. What you've said is that {mi} is the
> second argument of {jufra} - I forget the place structure of {jufra}, but
> you didn't intend that.

The second place of "jufra" is, in fact, a specification of what the
sentence is about.  So the above says "This utterance is a first sentence
about me in Lojban."  Unfortunately, the sentence is not about the speaker!

> So what to do? You can say 'my' but not 'is my'. Hm. Some suggestions:
> dei du lemi pamoi jufra befila lojban. (wimpy way out)
> dei me lemi pamoi jufra befila lojban. (slightly less wimpy)
> dei pamoi jufra fi la lojban. ci'a mi (the semantics of which is very iffy)

This one doesn't work.  It says "As written by me, this is the first
Lojban sentence".  So it claims that it is the first Lojban sentence ever,
and then adds as ancillary information that it is written by the author,
which is trivially true -- every written sentence is written by its author.

> dei pamoi finti befa mi be'o jufra fi la lojban. (complex tanru)
> 
> What I'd really like to have is: the first sentence such that I write it.
> But NOI only goes after sumtis, not after selbris. How do you qualify

Speaking :-).  "The first sentence such that I write it" is just "le
pamoi jufra poi mi ciska ke'a", so in the context given you do have a sumti.
Your "complex tanru" above actually is the selbri analogue of relative
clauses.

> Still, you're doing well. Lojban is a nontrivial language. Keep up the
> unproductve fun!

I'm really glad to see somebody stepped up to the plate on this one besides
mi joi la lojbab.  However, I will now give out *THE RIGHT ANSWER* :-):

	dei pamoi le'i mi jufra be fi la lojban
	This-utterance is-first-in the-set-of my sentences about Lojban.

The essential claim of "This is my first sentence", despite the English,
is not "dei jufra" = "This-utterance is-a-sentence", which is trivially
true, but "dei pamoi" = "This-utterance is-first".

It then remains to specify what (ordered) set it stands as the first of,
and that is precisely "le'i mi jufra be fi la lojban".

A version with basically the same content but simpler grammar would be:

	dei pamoi le'i mi lojbo jufra
	This-utterance is-first-in the-set-of my Lojbanic sentences.

-- 
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com		...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban