From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Tue Mar 17 17:11:20 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Tue, 17 Mar 92 17:11 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA01525; Tue, 17 Mar 92 17:08:41 EST Received: from pucc.Princeton.EDU by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA15517; Tue, 17 Mar 92 16:21:56 -0500 Message-Id: <9203172121.AA15517@relay1.UU.NET> Received: from PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU by pucc.Princeton.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 0145; Tue, 17 Mar 92 16:12:54 EST Received: by PUCC (Mailer R2.08 PTF011) id 8408; Tue, 17 Mar 92 16:12:39 EST Date: Tue, 17 Mar 1992 15:42:34 EST Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Re: A pair of how-do-i-say-it's X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: <9203171953.AA19602@relay1.UU.NET>; from "Mark E. Shoulson" at Mar 17, 92 2:45 pm Status: RO la mark. clsn. cusku di'e > The first is the use of {cei} and the {bu'a} series.... > Here's an example of a sentence I was playing with: > > George Bush is to the United States what John Major is to Great Britain. > la djordj. buc. bu'a le merko gugde .i la djan. meidjr. bu'a le brito gugde Correct, except that ".i" needs to be ".ije", otherwise the "bu'a"s are separate. This is a rule that applies to "da" also. > And some > examples with {cei}? Anyone have an idea? "cei" is not really useful with the bu'a-series. It serves as "goi" for the broda-series, thus: ti slasi je mlatu cidja bo lante gacri cei broda .i le crino broda cu barda .i le xunre broda cu cmalu This is a plastic-and-(cat food) can type-of-cover, or thingy. The green thingy is big. The red thingy is small. Like "goi", "cei" is symmetrical: the broda-series word can come first or last without change of meaning. Here's an example of "bu'a" within a prenex, from my Hakka story: ro bu'a zo'u la .aniis. cu djica le nu bu'a .inaja bu'a for-all [if] Anyi desires the event-of then The grammar demands that any bu'a-series variable appearing within a prenex must be quantified, typically with "ro" or "su'o". A bare "bu'a" is a selbri and isn't allowed. > The other came up in a translation I was thinking about. We have relative > clauses to specify sumti, but they only attach to sumti at a fairly low > syntactic level. So let's say I mean to say "I meet the man and the woman > wbout whom you talked with me." (meaning you talked about *both* of them. > And for the sake of argument, I met them separately and unrelatedly, so > {.e} would be a reasonable conjunction). This is a known problem which I'm working on for the next release of the grammar. Ideally, we should be able to say: *mi penmi ke le nanmu .e le ninmu ke'e poi do tavla mi ke'a but so far I haven't been able to make that form work. > The solution I found was with LUhI: > > mi penmi lu'a le nanmu .e le ninmu lu'u poi do tavla mi ke'a > I meet the-individuals-of: the man and the woman (close-LUhI) which-are... Yes, it works, but I agree it's ugh. (Hmm: we need a word to transform a UI into a selbri....) -- cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban