From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:51:31 2010 Reply-To: Trevor Hill Sender: Lojban list Date: Fri Feb 28 10:21:39 1997 X-UIDL: 857143439.021 From: Trevor Hill Subject: modals tagging selbri question... X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: U X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 959 X-From-Space-Date: Fri Feb 28 10:21:39 1997 X-From-Space-Address: - Message-ID: coi rodo... :) I have been wondering about those modal things for a while now, as they're not really very well explained (imho) in the reference grammar... anyway, could someone help me figure these out?? so... what if i want to say, "I can eat." The clearest way i know of to express this is: .i mi kakne le nu citka vau But it seems to be implied in the explanations of modals that i can say .i mi ka'e citka vau and have it mean "I can eat." -- this doesn't seem right to me. This seems to express "I (able)ly eat." -- so what about... .i mi citkyka'e vau using zo ka'e as the rafsi for zo kakne.... Does this mean (in the probable interpretation) "I can eat" ?? My main question is with regard to the modals -- what do they actually mean when used with a selbri...? Any help greatly appreciated... :) And thanks to those who've replied to explain things to me before... it helped quite a bit... :) Trevor C. Hill th2x+@andrew.cmu.edu