X-Digest-Num: 117
Message-ID: <44114.117.633.959273824@eGroups.com>
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 12:37:42 -0400
From: SwiftRain <swiftrain@geocities.com>
Subject: Re: di'e preti zo nu
X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 633
Content-Length: 1245
Lines: 35

"Jorge J. Llambías" wrote:
> 
> (3) "I need a box (any box)." The question "which box?" does not make
> sense in this case (or rather, the answer is "any one") because there
> is no box such that I need that particular one. Here I cannot use {lo}
> or {le} and be logically consistent, so I use {lo'e} for lack of 
> anything else, not because this has all that much to do with 
> typicality.
 
pe'i the appropriate something else, according to my own lojbanic
intuition & if i understand it correctly the reference grammar as well
(chapter 16 section 8), is {lo nu}: 
 
mi nitcu le tanxe 
 - i need the box (& we both know what i mean by "box") 
mi nitcu lo tanxe 
 - there is a da such that i need da & da is a box 
mi nitcu lo nu mi ponse lo tanxe 
 - i need an event of my possessing a box 
 
pe'i "mi nitcu lo'e tanxe" would mean "one of the properties of the
typical box is to be needed by me," that is, it would seem to assert
that i need a great number of boxes, probably most of them. 
 
 
ta'o, is this not an appropriate situation for tu'a?  it seems to
translate the english sentence pretty well, without requiring any extra
information to be specified: 
 
"mi nitcu tu'a lo tanxe" 
 - i need [something about] a box.