Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by nfs1.digex.net with SMTP id AA20506 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for ); Mon, 15 Aug 1994 11:37:42 -0400 Message-Id: <199408151537.AA20506@nfs1.digex.net> Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 9378; Mon, 15 Aug 94 11:36:59 EDT Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@UGA) by UGA.CC.UGA.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 7713; Mon, 15 Aug 1994 10:50:59 -0400 Date: Mon, 15 Aug 1994 10:50:14 EDT Reply-To: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU Sender: Lojban list From: Jorge Llambias Subject: Re: Nested preposed relative clauses X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Bob LeChevalier Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Mon Aug 15 11:37:57 1994 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu la veion cusku di'e > I am taking a wider view at the problem of preposed relative > clauses seeing that Jorge isn't very happy with them. Your exposition was very enlightening. You're right, the articles are the key to the problem. I like your second solution a bit more than the first, because you don't have to know that you're going to use a second clause when you start the first one. > This would require but a single new selma'o/cmavo {xu'o}. The example > would read > > *le poi le tcadu cu se klama xu'o nanmu cu se viska ku'o verba [ which would mean the same as le verba poi viska le nanmu poi klama le tcadu ] > The basic structure of Lojban is such that there is no way to avoid > descriptors. However, the above amendment would remove the innate > center-embedding problem in one of the most frequent cases and > enhance the useability of the language significantly (from the > viewpoint of people with non-descriptor native tongues, e.g. quite > many non-Indo-European ones.) If it doesn't create ambiguities, I suppose I wouldn't be against it. Jorge