From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Thu Sep 9 13:28:06 1993 Received: from BULLDOG.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 9 Sep 1993 17:31:27 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by bulldog.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Thu, 9 Sep 1993 17:31:22 -0400 Message-Id: <199309092131.AA01745@bulldog.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 5837; Thu, 09 Sep 93 17:29:41 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 4811; Thu, 09 Sep 93 17:31:54 EDT Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1993 17:28:06 -0400 Reply-To: "Mark E. Shoulson" Sender: Lojban list From: "Mark E. Shoulson" Subject: Parsing tenses and sumti tcita X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: Veijo Vilva's message of Thu, 9 Sep 1993 13:29:15 -0400 Status: RO X-Status: >Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1993 13:29:15 -0400 >From: Veijo Vilva > 1. placed sumti > 2. FA tagged sumti > 3. sumti > ------- > 4. KU > 5. NA KU > where is a (tense, BAI etc.) tag > Now, 1-3 are sumti of one type or another and 4&5 are interpreted > presently as floating selbri tcita. > I have never felt quite comfortable with these floating selbri tcita. > They have been used mainly to shift the emphasis, e.g. > naku mi klama > The same result with even more emphasis can be obtained with > na klama fa mi > I think the latter structure is much more intuitive and doesn't > lead to mush at the level. Maybe so, but my brain reminds me of a situation where one of these floaters was the most general choice, though I didn't much like it. Perhaps the grammar needs tweaking to avoid this case: It was in the ckafybarja discussion; I had mistakenly taken {lo selpinxe ckafi} to mean {lo ckafi poi ca'a se pinxe}, i.e. "coffee that's sliding down someone's throat", as opposed to the intended meaning "coffee type-of beverage". The latter I had thought to translate {na'o selpinxe ckafi} for "typically-drunk coffee", but alas, this parses to {na'o }, with the {na'o} applying to the whole phrase and not just the {selpinxe}, as I intended. {*ke na'o selpinxe ke'e ckafi} isn't grammatical. You can use {ckafi co na'o selpinxe}, but I don't trust {co}, since it won't get you out of a jam in all situations. John Cowan (I think) said that the way to do it, if needed, was {selpinxe be na'o ku ckafi}, with the "floating" nature of the selbri tcita doing just the Right Thing. ckafi for thought... ~mark