From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:50:43 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI Received: (qmail 8330 invoked from network); 8 Mar 1997 21:17:59 -0000 Received: from segate.sunet.se (192.36.125.6) by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with SMTP; 8 Mar 1997 21:17:59 -0000 Received: from segate.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <4.090705E9@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Sat, 8 Mar 1997 22:17:55 +0100 Date: Sat, 8 Mar 1997 13:50:09 -0700 Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Organization: Quetzal Subject: Re: modals tagging selbri question... X-To: lojban%cuvmb.bitnet@mitvma.mit.edu To: Veijo Vilva Content-Length: 971 Lines: 24 Message-ID: Trevor wrote: > 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." I think you're generalizing incorrectly from tanru to modals. With tanru, the first one modifies the second one in the way you describe -- for example "mi kakne citka vau" would mean "I ablely eat". But with modals it works almost the other way around; you can think of the selbri as modifying *them*, in a way. "mi ka'e citka" describes a capability; "mi pu'o citka" describes something that is fixin' to happen (which might not actually come to pass); "mi na'e citka" describes something other than eating. I think the modals are all pretty consistent this way: "mi citka" is not necessarily a kind of eating. -- ____ Chris Bogart \ / http://www.quetzal.com Boulder, CO \/ cbogart@quetzal.com