Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 19 Oct 1993 17:05:35 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 19 Oct 1993 17:05:17 -0400 Message-Id: <199310192105.AA07470@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8706; Tue, 19 Oct 93 17:03:17 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 6083; Tue, 19 Oct 93 16:58:07 EDT Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1993 16:53:53 -0400 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: TECH: (attention Ivan!) demonstrative predicate cmavo needed? X-Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: <199310191907.AA21191@access.digex.net> from "Logical Language Group" at Oct 19, 93 03:07:41 pm Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Tue Oct 19 12:53:53 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET mi'e .djan. .i la lojbab. cusku di'e > The word I was looking for was a predicate demonstrative. Adjectively in > English, it is "that kind of", adverbially: "thusly, that way". > "me ta" doesn't really do it. Nora suggested "simsa be ta", which > covers many USES of such a demonstrative predicate, i.e. in tanru, but > in itself is not a predicate demonstrative. I'm thinking we need a cmavo > that would work like "mo". I believe that "me ta" is sufficient. As is well established, "me " is vague, and can mean "du be " or "steci be " or "simsa be "; in fact, we might almost as well admit that it means "co'e be " and have done, except for the presence of the x2 place of "me" which means "in aspect...". Grammatically, "me " does work like "mo"; both are tanru-unit-2s, and no terminator is ever needed. > Is this need my imagination? Or is it something essential to a predicate > language that has been missing because English is less predicate-y than > Russian. There are a number of pro-sumti that don't have pro-bridi equivalents. In all cases "me " seems to do the job: la maks. me mi mlatu Max is a me-ish cat. > (I wonder how Chinese handles such demonstrative effects?) From what I understand (from Wang & Li), the Chinese demonstratives zhei4 (this), nei4 (that), and nei3 (which one?) are neither pronouns nor pro-verbs, but rather pattern like quantifiers (p. 104): san1 ge ren2 three CLASSIFIER person three people is exactly analogous to zhei4 zhan3 deng1 this CLASSIFIER lamp this lamp -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.