X-Digest-Num: 218
Message-ID: <44114.218.1175.959273825@eGroups.com>
Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 10:24:51 PDT
From: "Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Elided selbri
X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 1175
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la robin cusku di'e

>The Book is quite explicit in denying
>that you can simply miss out a selbri in the same way that you
>miss out trailing sumti, for example (p. 158).

But the formal grammar will accept them, and the formal
grammar has precedence over the rest of the book. Sentences
consisting of sumti only are grammatical, whether they are
called sentences or fragments doesn't really change anything.
And more important, if you read some of the Lojban that people
write you will notice that such sentences are actually being
used. They should mean the same as if the selbri was {co'e},
i.e. you can only tell from the context.

>caku la djiotis. goi ko'i mo'ine'i
>
>Here I omit the selbri since {mo'ine'i} implies coming in, and
>Jyoti's manner of coming is not important, but this contradicts
>the ruling on p. 158.

The sentence is grammatical. The meaning seems to me
very clear. What is the problem?

The comment on p. 158 makes sense when referring to
sub-clauses. You could not say, for example,
*{mi djuno le du'u caku la djiotis mo'ine'i}. In those
cases the selbri can't be left out, unfortunately.

co'o mi'e xorxes