X-Digest-Num: 90 Message-ID: <44114.90.518.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 18:27:40 -0500 From: Kevin Turner Subject: ti preti lojban X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 518 Content-Length: 1966 Lines: 46 coi lojbanistan Hi. My name is Kevin Turner (no relation to Robin). I am a native speaker of American and am studying Espaņol, but have found myself more interested with the idea of learning languages than with learning any language in particular. And so it was that I discovered constructed languages and lojban, which I have now embarked on learning. I've been reading the first lesson of the draft textbook and parts of the reference grammar, and have come up with some questions. 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. 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. 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? 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? mi cikrie - keven. (or is it geven.?)