From jkominek@miranda.org Wed Oct 13 10:55:03 2004 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Wed, 13 Oct 2004 10:55:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from miranda.org ([209.58.150.153] ident=qmailr) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.34) id 1CHnL5-0002md-HK for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Wed, 13 Oct 2004 10:55:03 -0700 Received: (qmail 10614 invoked by uid 534); 13 Oct 2004 16:08:19 -0000 From: jkominek@miranda.org Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 10:08:19 -0600 To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: cmavo can be selbri? Message-ID: <20041013160819.GS18003@miranda.org> References: <87r7ocvn9y.fsf@pacbell.net> <200410061402.i96E2VMY019310@mole.e-mol.com> <87hdozatdi.fsf@pacbell.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <87hdozatdi.fsf@pacbell.net> Accept-Language: jbo, en User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i X-archive-position: 817 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: jkominek@miranda.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Wed, Oct 13, 2004 at 01:56:41AM -0700, Starling wrote: > Actually my question had to do with whether all cmavo could be used as > the selbri in a bridi. 'xu' cannot, while 'du' can it seems. I > suppose it's just arbitrary, or obvious There is a list of them. As, I believe, Robin mentioned. > But I did want to make sure there wasn't some rule I haven't found > yet that states all cmavo can be used as selbri, even ones that > don't fit any undestandable thought pattern. The rule is: "The ones on the list are selbri. The rest aren't." They have place structures defined in the reference grammar. > You are right though. ;) I said "xu zo'e cmavo la xu" when the sumti > should have been "zo xu" and placed in x1 not x2 of cmavo. Thus "zo > xu cmavo" makes good sense. And to go full circle, this might make > sense as well to equate 'xu' as a cmavo-thing. > > zo xu du le cmavo Any time you're about to write a bridi of the form "X du le Y": Stop. Do not do it. You just want "X Y". Or, "zo xu cmavo" in this case. Your above utterance is grammatically valid, but horrible and doesn't mean what you want. > Not sure if that also means all cmavo are 'xu' (which is false) but > having not yet mastered lojban numbers I'm definitely stretching to > use 'du' as a selbri. I don't see how you can stretch it. You might as well say "I'm definitely stretching to use a Ford Crown Victoria as a car." -- Jay Kominek Don't worry, Things have an annoying tendency to work out.