Message-Id: <199311231556.AA05642@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date:         Tue, 23 Nov 1993 15:52:32 GMT
Reply-To: Colin Fine <C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Colin Fine <C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK>
Subject:      Re: proposal for new member of SE
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
Status: RO

The following exchange ended with a question from And:
++++>
 > mi'e .djan. .i la .and. cusku di'e
> > But to get very natural orders like 51234 you need several SE or several
> > FA, so though the effect of rotation can be achieved by existing
> > devices, they  are cumbersome relative to the naturalness of the order.
>
> Well, you do need "several SE", but only two FA are required:
>
>         fu le karce cu klama fa mi la bastn. la .atlantas. le dargu
>
> thanks to the "FA-suppletion" rules, which say that an un-FA'ed place falls
> into the numerically next place not yet filled.

How's this? I'd thought that to get 51234 with FA you just need "fu" on
the first sumti. Why not? [I don't know why I originally said you need
several FA.]
>+++++

You may be right that this would be the meaning. I urge that this form of
expression (marking a so'imoi tergismu explicitly and then relying on
the suppletion rule to fill up earlier ones) not be used, as it relies on
the hearer knowing exactly how many places are defined. In this it
shares a fault with JCB's rotation method.

Of course in theory everybody knows all their tergismu, don't they,
but in practice you don't need to in order to use the leading tergismu.

I am not saying this practice should be forbidden - after all, unless we
are to declare the sentence with only 'FU' ungrammatical, we need to
give it an interpretation, and this is logical. But I hope nobody uses
it much.

        Colin