Message-Id: <9107011418.AA00920@relay1.UU.NET>
From: cbmvax!uunet!ctr.columbia.edu!shoulson
Date: Mon Jul  1 10:30:58 1991
To: nsn@ee.mu.oz.au
Cc: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com, nsn@ee.mu.oz.au
In-Reply-To: nsn@ee.mu.OZ.AU's message of Mon, 01 Jul 91 15:14:07 +1000 <9107010514.AA16800@munagin.ee.mu.OZ.AU>
Subject: Panpredicate pomposity?
Status: RO

Nick says:
>>> Perhaps we can do the same for members of selma'o BAI.
>
>which is what I started to do in my last mail. The analysis is needed to
>show why some omissions of {ne/pe} are nonsensical. Hands up all those who
>treated {be'i} as a true sumtcita dangling in the sentence, instead of sticking
>it next to the sent thing {lo se benji}. Mark, you're one of them %^)

Guilty as charged.  (Don't bother flipping through old mail messages; you
won't find it.  It was in a snailmail letter I sent to Nick in which I
referred to a letter which lojbab sent as "be'i la lojbab.")  So how are
you saying it should be used?  I could have said "noi la lojbab. benji
ke'a," but to use "be'i," you say I need a ne/pe link.  So it should be "ne
be'i la lojbab."?  "Which is incidentally related to sent by lojbab"?  I
know you can't check grammar by translating into English, but that still
doesn't work.  "ne" implies association or relation.  What is it related
to?  I could see using "noi" or "poi," but I don't understand what relation
is there for "ne/pe".

Hey, *here's* a keen idea.  Just came to me while typing, so it's certainly
wrong, but something to think about.  If we consider BAI words wo be sumti
tcita, then to attach them to a sumti, we need proper sumti links.  So:

mi catlu le cukta be be'i la lojbab.
I look-at the book (sent-by lojbab.)

See?  If be'i is a link to a non-canonical "place" of the book (cukta),
then it deserves linkage with "be" just like any other place of cukta in
this sentence.  Sorry if this is patently wrong (or, for that matter, so
obvious it's already done regularly).

For that matter, I can defend the sentence you refer to, Nick.  As I
recall, the sentence went something like:

ti me la esperant. ke lojbo ke cmalu cukta be'i la lojbab.
this is the Espish, lojbish, small-book {sent-by lojbab}

So be'i attaches to the predicate of the sentence, namely "cukta" (modified
by the other elements in that monstr tanru).  It's as if "cukta" had
another place, indicating "sent by..." -- which is what I wanted!!

How does this sound to people who know better?

~mark