From rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Tue Oct 05 16:04:40 2004 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Tue, 05 Oct 2004 16:04:41 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.34) id 1CEyMK-0001Ye-PT for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Tue, 05 Oct 2004 16:04:40 -0700 Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 16:04:40 -0700 To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: cmavo can be selbri? Message-ID: <20041005230440.GR8900@chain.digitalkingdom.org> References: <87r7ocvn9y.fsf@pacbell.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <87r7ocvn9y.fsf@pacbell.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040722i From: Robin Lee Powell X-archive-position: 801 X-Approved-By: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.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: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Tue, Oct 05, 2004 at 03:00:09PM -0700, Starling wrote: > Whee, don't know if anyone listens to this list, 287 subscribers as of a few minutes ago. Welcome. Several of us make a point of answering questions when we can. > I know that gismu can be selbri... seen enough examples of that. > But the definition for 'du' calls it both cmavo and selbri. That's correct. > Is this a valid question in lojban: > > xu la xu cu du la cmavo No, however "xu zo xu cu du la cmavo" is. It doesn't do what you want, though. It asks if the word "xu" is perfectly equivalent to something named "cmavo". "du" almost never does what an English speaker wants; I reccomend that beginning Lojbanists avoid it utterly. > If that is true, then can 'xu' itself be used as a selbri? No. > Or is it just that some cmavo cannot be used as selbri, since they > don't define a predicate structure? Exactly. IIRC, only cmavo in the same category as du can be so used; here's a list: bu'a some selbri 1 bu'e some selbri 2 bu'i some selbri 3 co'e unspecif bridi du same identity as go'a recent bridi go'e penultimate bridi go'i last bridi go'o future bridi go'u earlier bridi mo bridi ? nei current bridi no'a next outer bridi > I understand that cmavo itself is a cmavo-establishment selbri, so > it would be better to ask instead > > xu zo'e cmavo la xu The question that you want is "xu zo xu cu cmavo". The question you just asked, if it were grammatical (which it's not) would be "Is it true that there is something in the same cmavo category as something named "xu"?". > But I was curious as to whether the 'du' cmavo could be used as a > selbri. Absolutely. -Robin -- http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/ Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!"