From yuvalh@hotpop.com Sat Jul 26 12:41:21 2003 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Sun, 27 Jul 2003 11:22:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from babyruth.hotpop.com ([204.57.55.14]) by digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.12) id 19gUuv-0007De-00 for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Sat, 26 Jul 2003 12:41:21 -0700 Received: from hotpop.com (kubrick.hotpop.com [204.57.55.16]) by babyruth.hotpop.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 0A6B921181F for ; Sat, 26 Jul 2003 19:40:46 +0000 (UTC) Received: from yuval (bzq-218-207-185.red.bezeqint.net [81.218.207.185]) by smtp-3.hotpop.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4B7684EF24B for ; Sat, 26 Jul 2003 19:40:37 +0000 (UTC) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15; format=flowed To: "lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org" Subject: [lojban-beginners] What does la'e mean? From: Yuval Harel MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 22:40:38 +0200 Message-ID: User-Agent: Opera7.10/Win32 M2 build 2840 X-archive-position: 415 X-Approved-By: jkominek@miranda.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: yuvalh@hotpop.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners I'm somewhat confused about the meaning of la'e. >From what I've seen, la'e seems to have two distinct and contradictory uses: 1) Operating on a name, la'e transforms it into the/a referent of that name, e.g. {mi tcidu la'e zoi gy. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul .gy.}. This usage maintains {da cmene la'e da} for all {da}. It is also consistent with the definition of la'e in the cmavo list, namely "the referent of (indirect pointer); uses the referent of a sumti as the desired sumti". 2) Operating on an utterance, la'e transforms it into the/a meaning of that utterance. From what Iv'e seen, it appears that la'e in la'edi'u is always understood to have that meaning. For example {mi tcidu lo cukta .i la'edi'u xamgu} is understood to mean that my reading of the book is good, not that something named "I read a book" is good, as expected by interpretation no. 1. This usage maintains {la'e da smuni da} for all {da}. I don't see how this usage is consistent with the definition of la'e in the cmavo list, except by an illojbanically blurry understanding of the word "referent". How can both these usages be correct? Am I missing something? I would guess that only 1 is correct, since I can't see any other way to say {la'eda} that is less wordy than {le se cmene be da}, while 2 appears to be used only in {la'edi'u}, which is just like {lesu'u go'i} (isn't it?) . On the other hand, I do see a lot of {la'edi'u}s around.