X-Digest-Num: 90 Message-ID: <44114.90.519.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 11:08:33 +0200 From: Robin Turner Subject: Re: ti preti lojban X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 519 Content-Length: 3985 Lines: 107 la kevyn. cusku di'e > > I've been > reading the first lesson of the draft textbook and parts of the > reference grammar, and have come up with some questions. > I'll have a go at answering these, but as I'm not one of the elders of Lojbanistan, take my comments with a pinch of salt. {ba'a} more definitive pronouncements will be forthcoming from Lojbab, Jorge, cowan et al. > > Is there any constistancy of sumti order for gismu? The first place is > seems very regular (as the-thing-which-is-to-be-related), but beyond > that... For example tavla and dunda. Tavla has x2 being the recipient > of the talking while x3 is the thing which is being talked about, while > dunda has x3 being the recipient of the giving while x2 is the thing > which is given. > AFAIK, there is no absolute order for sumti places, but there are a few general principles, the main one being how likely you are to use a particular sumti place. Thus although the most common order corresponds approximately to nominative, accusitive, dative, ablative, there are a few exceptions, like {tavla}. This is socially determined, I think - who you talk to is generally regarded as as, if not more, important than what you talk about. Compare {tavla} with {cusku}, which has a different place structure (and is the default for reporting communication). > > Also, it seems to be common to for gismu definitions to have a "made of > material" simtu tacked on at the end, but this is not universal. I can > specify the material for a bottle by supplying the third sumti to botpi, > but it seems to me such a sumti would be frequently ellipsed, thus > making it difficult to remeber if it was defined. > I was originally in favour of dropping a lot of these "minor sumti", but now I'm not so sure. I take your point that we might forget whether something is defined, but I think in practice it wouldn't be a problem. Let's say that speaker A is under the false impression that a selbri has a sumti place for "made of material x4", and puts it in his/her sentence. Speaker B my be a bit puzzled by this, but would almost certainly realise that in putting {lei tinsypelji} there, he/she was trying to say "made of cardboard". > > In contrast, another method is required to say "Adobe, the car that's > made out of clay," as karce has no such material-sumti place defined. > So I imagine there is a selbri for "x1 is constructed of material x2"... > But I am curious, what was the rationale for occasionally defining these > "made of" placements? > Convenience, I suppose. There is a gismu zbasu [ zba ] make x1 makes/assembles/builds/manufactures/creates x2 out of materials/parts/components x3 so " X is constructed of Y" could be X{se zbasu fi}Y (X{se zbasu}Y would be "X is made by Y). For extra places not handled in the definition, Lojban uses "modal selbri" (the term "modal" is a hangover from Loglan, IIRC, and has very little to do with the normal use of this term in linguistics). The modal for "made of" is {ma'e} (from {marji} - "matter, material"). Thus, to translate your example of a clay car, you could have: la .adob. karci ma'e loi kliti but I would probably just make a tanru and say {staku karci} - ceramic car. > > My bridi of the day: I had to interrupt my afternoon's study of lojban > to go to my psychology class, of which today's topic was language. On > my way there, I discovered that I did not yet have the vocabulary to say > "the class of mind-study," but I could probably say that I was going to > "the one who talks about small heads". I came up with > > mi klama le te le stedu cpana ku tavla ku > > Is this correct? > The nested sumti look a bit dodgy to me, though normally when I say something is bad Lojban, Jorge or Cowan point out that it's perfectly OK! I would say mi klama le menske ctufau kumfau I go the mind-science lesson room > > mi cikrie > - keven. > (or is it geven.?) > Only if you've got a cold! co'o mi'e robin.