From - Mon Mar 10 10:08:51 1997 Reply-To: "Jorge J. Llambias" Date: Mon Mar 10 10:08:51 1997 Sender: Lojban list From: "Jorge J. Llambias" Subject: Re: Some how-do-you-says X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1692 Message-ID: la markl di'e cusku > > > 2a le vrici mamta be la xorxes. je la .and. > > > ... > > I don't think that works. In 2a you're describing > > each of the things as being vrici mamta of both > > Jorge and And. > > Okay, but what is responsible for this unintended > result? I assume that {vrici}, altho perhaps > unhelpful, is not the problem. Right. > I assume that {le} > should be {lei} or {loi}. Yes, that would work for me, but it is not what And wants. He wants to be able to say something about each of the mothers, not about the two as a whole. > What else needs to be > changed in order to produce the intended result? I don't have a complete answer. We need the "and" to be outside of the description, which I think means that it has to go in the prenex. So I would say something like: la xorxes e la and zo'u le ri mamta For Jorge and And: each of their mothers... > Should I have used a conjunction other than {je}? Well, {je} is not really grammatical there, although in my opinion it should be. {je} should be grammatical anywhere that {joi} is, because it can't cause any ambiguity and it is immediately understandable. > If so, which one? I thought at first that {.a} would work, and it does in this special case, only because a mother is something we all tend to have: le mamta be la xorxes a la and Each of those that are mother of Jorge or And but this is not a general solution, because if you change for example to sister, you would not be saying that both Jorge and And actually do have at least one sister, which is part of the claim we want to make. co'o mi'e xorxes