From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sat Aug 23 07:27:22 2008 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:09:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1KWu5J-0005f7-MI for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Sat, 23 Aug 2008 07:27:22 -0700 Received: from proxy3.bredband.net ([195.54.101.73]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1KWu5A-0005dx-6e for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sat, 23 Aug 2008 07:27:21 -0700 Received: from ironport.bredband.com (195.54.101.120) by proxy3.bredband.net (7.3.127) id 481183EA01DE044F for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:27:05 +0200 X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: An4PAE+7r0jVcLZYPGdsb2JhbAAIiEmJTwEBAQEtAaFTgWg Received: from c-58b670d5.027-10-67766c2.cust.bredbandsbolaget.se (HELO [192.168.1.11]) ([213.112.182.88]) by ironport1.bredband.com with ESMTP; 23 Aug 2008 16:27:05 +0200 Subject: [lojban] Dereferencing sumti referring to selbri From: Daniel Brockman To: lojban-list@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:27:19 +0200 Message-Id: <1219501639.22940.88.camel@weewam> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.22.2 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 14665 X-Approved-By: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: daniel@brockman.se Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Hi, More than once I've wanted to convert a sumti referring to a selbri into an actual selbri. For example, there's a lojbanist named {cizra} and there's a weird lojbanist named {.LOkadin.}. How can we express this question in Lojban? .i la .LOkadin. [what?] lo cmene be lo jbopre The name of cizra refers to a selbri, and to complete the above sentence we need a way to convert an indirectly, _mentioned_ selbri into an actual grammatically _used_ selbri. Now, {la'e zo cizra} refers to the meaning of the word {cizra}, which gets us halfway, and {me} converts the sumti into a grammatical selbri, so it would seem to take us the rest of the way. However, {me} only creates a kind of weak identity predicate: {srana be la'e zo cizra} or {dunli be la'e zo cizra}. Neither of these words are adequate; we need the grammar of {me} but no semantics other than those of {la'e}. We can get by with {ckaji tu'a}: .i la .LOkadin. ckaji tu'a lo cmene be lo jbopre But it would be nice if we had a more precise way to make this conversion and retain the place structure of the selbri, so that we could ask, .i la .LOkadin. [what?] lo cmene be la cizra fi ma In other words, what we need is a way to convert a quotation of a selbri into an actual grammatical selbri with its full place structure. Let's call this hypothetical word {me'ei} (mnemonic: {me} + {selbri}). Then we could say, .i la .LOkadin. me'ei lo jbocmene lo to po'o nai toi ka ciska tadji When you think about this, you realize that what you have is essentially a very easy way to create nonce fu'ivla: .i mi citka lo me'ei zoi fy. crème brûlée .fy. The canonical way to do this is with a so-called stage-1 fu'ivla: .i mi citka lo me la'o fy. crème brûlée .fy. What you can't do with a stage-1 fu'ivla, however, is import transient verbs or other multi-argument predicates into Lojban. This is why we have the (unofficial) convention of "stage-0" fu'ivla: .i mi na'e -fluent la .lojban. If you add {me'ei} to your toolbox, you can do this sort of thing without resorting to the extra-linguistic hyphen device: .i mi na'e me'ei zo'oi fluent la .lojban. Does anyone think adding something like {me'ei} would be a good idea? -- Daniel Brockman daniel@brockman.se To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.