Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 16:16:16 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711072116.QAA10302@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: Beginner question: seitu'a lo velrimni je pemci X-To: mark.vines@wholefoods.com X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1811 X-From-Space-Date: Fri Nov 7 16:17:03 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU >.i la .ivan. spuda mi di'e > >> Mark Vines wrote: >> > [...] the first sumti, a position I think of as >> > the topical. >> >> Is the notion that x1 is a topic position supported >> by the standard? > >.i mi spuda la .ivan. di'e > >Not explicitly, as far as I know ... but the notion >may be implied by the existence of "bridi-tail" >conjunction cmavo, & other points of grammar, such >as the effect of {gadri} descriptors, that do appear >to "privilege" the x1 position. Well the x1 position is privileged by the gadri descrirptors, but tha t should have no semantic import in interpreting a bridi, only a descriptor. The existence of bridi-tail and other gramamtical structures in the YACC should not be taken to infer anything. Some things exist in the formal grammar simply because they are necessary to make the language unambiguous grammatically, and have no actual Lojbanic meaning at all, much less semantic import. In this case, a bridi tail only serves to group those sumti that appear after the selbri to enable certain kinds of constructions. The existence of a bridi tail says nothing about how many sumti appear before the selbri (if any). So you can have a bridi tail with x1 in the tail or you can have x1 and x2 before the selbri so that the bridi-tail starts with x3. Discussion on tiopoc comment is in the refgram, chap 19, section 4. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.