From lojban-beginners+bncCNCCoMTMDhDfzu3xBBoEBAzhhQ@googlegroups.com Thu Aug 04 20:45:48 2011 Received: from mail-yx0-f189.google.com ([209.85.213.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1QpBM1-0004kL-D5; Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:45:48 -0700 Received: by yxk8 with SMTP id 8sf909511yxk.16 for ; Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:45:38 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:from :date:message-id:subject:to:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:x-google-group-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type; bh=y2VbSZ7seDyFVXGiqZgYj5KzMgrQjDgZhQrL9O8xYSg=; b=CGNmS54rXjvwo+rZ4cxUxwuLU/tYfWAPsbw0peh8bgJK2dXEXHhh3/zZG57jsG4PPZ Ue/Kuo47CGOwT/4+G+aODV9jRliO9wludLC/vPpwfA2V78xR+GiRTj4MUVkHKNqqNGjy 9WAabhr23HT3tEEjrB47R3mF0COM4jqYsmZPc= Received: by 10.147.55.8 with SMTP id h8mr232747yak.28.1312515935698; Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:45:35 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.100.146.20 with SMTP id t20ls8006080and.5.gmail; Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:45:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.100.144.5 with SMTP id r5mr329329and.13.1312515934722; Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:45:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.100.144.5 with SMTP id r5mr329328and.13.1312515934694; Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:45:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-pz0-f43.google.com (mail-pz0-f43.google.com [209.85.210.43]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id t25si2968634anp.1.2011.08.04.20.45.34 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:45:34 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of selckiku@gmail.com designates 209.85.210.43 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.210.43; Received: by mail-pz0-f43.google.com with SMTP id 1so2742609pzk.16 for ; Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:45:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.142.11.17 with SMTP id 17mr1607763wfk.144.1312515934170; Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:45:34 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.143.66.4 with HTTP; Thu, 4 Aug 2011 20:45:04 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <643b76b3-4882-4a17-9dd4-c95609652c69@s17g2000yqs.googlegroups.com> References: <643b76b3-4882-4a17-9dd4-c95609652c69@s17g2000yqs.googlegroups.com> From: Stela Selckiku Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 23:45:04 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [lojban-beginners] How to say "the x which/who/that does y, does z" To: lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com X-Original-Sender: selckiku@gmail.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of selckiku@gmail.com designates 209.85.210.43 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=selckiku@gmail.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com; contact lojban-beginners+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: X-Google-Group-Id: 300742228892 List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 7:41 PM, wrote: > Hi, everyone. Or, should I say, coi rodo. fi'i do (Welcome!) > How do you say "the x which/who/that does y, does z"? Half of Lojban's grammar is ways to do this. A bridi is a very simple thing. A bridi has in it just one relationship (the selbri) and just one list of arguments (the terbri). It just talks about those arguments being in that relationship. To say anything complicated, anything that relates various arguments to each other in various ways, you have to combine more than one bridi, tying them all together into a bundle that makes numerous related assertions. > "The woman who owns a car is my mother." OK so here's an ordinary sentence that seems simple enough. But really it expresses quite a lot. There's not just one relationship described here. We have the relationship of owning a car, the relationship of *being* a car, the relationship between you and your mother, and the relationship of being a woman (the relationship between some person and her gender). But even then we just have a pile of unconnected descriptions. In addition to expressing all of those relationships, we also want to express a connection between them-- namely, that the owner, your mother, and the person who's a woman are all the same person, and that the thing that's owned is the same thing as the car. If we couldn't tie bridi together into a bundle, we'd have a lot of bridi to say: {.i karce .i ponse lo go'i .i ninmu .i mamta mi .i lo go'i lo go'e lo go'i xi ci cu du} "There's a car. Someone possesses that car. Someone is a woman. Someone is my mother. The last thing, and the second to last thing, and the third to last thing are all the same thing." So we'd rather wrap them all up together instead. But now we have some choices to make. Like I said, half of Lojban's grammar is various ways of doing this. And it's not entirely arbitrary which way we tie things together, either. While we're tying together all these different objects and their various relationships, we're also adding another layer of expression on top. Next we show the relationship (of the relationships between the relationships) to the conversation itself, to me and the people I'm talking to and what we're talking about. For instance, there's a slight emphasis on the first sumti in a sentence. It was brought up first (and Lojban's flexible enough that we could have mentioned things in any order if we really wanted to) so that implies that it's the first thing we should be thinking about and relating everything else in the sentence to. It's a bit like the difference between saying "speaking of my mother, she owns that car" and saying "speaking of that car, it's owned by my mother"-- but not even that strong, just a bit of a suggestion that the first thing is especially notable in this context. So we have to choose between, for example: {le ninmu noi ponse lo karce cu mamta mi} "The woman has a car and is my mother." {le ponse be lo karce be'o noi ninmu cu mamta mi} "The owner of a car is a woman and is my mother." {le mamta be mi be'o noi ninmu cu ponse lo karce} "My mom, who's a woman, owns a car." {lo karce cu se ponse le ninmu noi mamta mi} "A car is owned by a woman, who's my mom." Another example of emphasis is that just one of the relationships described can have the privileged position of being the main relationship of the top-level bridi in the sentence, the main selbri. There are lots of different relationships embedded in a complex bridi, inside all kinds of descriptions and clauses, and we have to single one of them out for that central position. So obviously there's an implication that that's an especially important relationship in the context of the sentence. Putting {ninmu} as the main selbri: {le mamta be mi be'o noi ponse lo karce cu ninmu} "My mother, who owns a car, is a woman." Putting {ponse} as the main selbri: {le mamta be mi be'o noi ninmu cu ponse lo karce} "My mother, who's a woman, owns a car." Putting {mamta} as the main selbri: {le ninmu noi ponse lo karce cu mamta mi} "The woman, who owns a car, is my mother." Putting {karce} as the main selbri: {lo se ponse be le ninmu noi mamta mi cu karce} "Something owned by the woman, who's my mother, is a car." There's plenty of other ways of tying bridi together, like logical connection. There's all kinds of magical things you can do with logical connection, but you can also just use AND, in which case it just connects two related bridi (in lots of useful shapes) and asserts both of them. Or you can connect bridi together more vaguely, with things like seltanru or BAI. Don't feel like you have to learn them all at once. You'll have a couple you use at first and then as you learn more of them your Lojban will get smoother and there will be more things it's easy for you to say. mu'o mi'e la stela selckiku -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Lojban Beginners" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban-beginners+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban-beginners?hl=en.