Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 19 Oct 1993 15:09:11 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 19 Oct 1993 15:09:06 -0400 Message-Id: <199310191909.AA04568@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8177; Tue, 19 Oct 93 15:07:07 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 5117; Tue, 19 Oct 93 15:09:56 EDT Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1993 15:07:41 -0400 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: TECH: (attention Ivan!) demonstrative predicate cmavo needed? X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Tue Oct 19 11:07:41 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET I'm wondering if we have a hole in the language. I wanted to say something easy to say in Russian but at best murky in Lojban. English gets around it with polysemous 'that' and 'thus' or just ellipsis. The word I was looking for was a predicate demonstrative. Adjectively in English, it is "that kind of", adverbially: "thusly, that way". Russian has a richer use that I haven't exactly mastered yet, but the various words involved include tak/takzhe (adverbs, I guess I would call them) and takoi (adjective, having several other forms through declension). There are other related words to/tot which seem to be the pronoun demonstratives, though I think I have seen other uses for them. "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". 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. (I wonder how Chinese handles such demonstrative effects?) lojbab lojbab