Message-Id: <m0jkHUi-0001YqC@snark.thyrsus.com>
From: snark!cowan
Apparently-From: snark!cowan
Subject: Re: cleft place structures
To: cbmvax!uunet!cunixf.cc.columbia.edu!shoulson
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 91 11:10:58 EDT
In-Reply-To: <9105311644.AA07963@relay2.UU.NET>; from "Mark Shoulson" at May 31, 91 12:44 pm
Status: RO

la mark. clsn. cusku di'e:
> Um, this may be a Red Herring, but it seems to me that these cleft place
> structures have a lot in common with relative clauses.  I mean, the
> complaint is that the actor gets re-used in a subortinate clause which
> indicates how the change was effected or whatever.  Note that the actor of
> the main sentence need not be the actor of the subordinate one (for lack of
> a better term.  Note also that "actor" doesn't have that much of a meaning
> in Lojban, nor does the x1 place deserve spectial treatment.  But the label
> is convenient), nor does the actor even need to appear in the subordinate
> clause (e.g. Arthur Protin's Iraqi example, "I will modify our country's
> borders by your invasion of Kuwait.")

The x1 place does get special treatment in Lojban, simply because of its
special properties in descriptions.  "le" and the other articles specify
a sumti by saying that it meets the x1 place of the selbri following the
article.

Your other points bespeak confusion between relative clauses and abstractions.
The cleft place structures deal with subordinate bridi in abstractions, not
in relative clauses attached to other sumti.

The pronoun "ke'a" reaches upward to the sumti modified by a relative
clause:

	lo mlatu poi mi zbasu ke'a loi slasi
	a cat such that I made it [the cat] from-a-mass-of plastic

It does not deal with abstractions at all.

-- 
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com		...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban