From phma@ixazon.dynip.com Fri Oct 22 13:34:59 2004 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:34:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [216.189.121.177] (helo=blackcat.ixazon.lan) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1CL67e-00005v-U4 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:34:51 -0700 Received: by blackcat.ixazon.lan (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 930D9471E; Fri, 22 Oct 2004 20:34:17 +0000 (UTC) From: Pierre Abbat Organization: dis To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: Help in examples ... Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:34:16 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.5 References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200410221634.16750.phma@phma.hn.org> X-archive-position: 8837 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: phma@phma.hn.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Friday 22 October 2004 09:34, riderofgiraffes wrote: > I've been trying to explain to someone why it is when discussing > lojban that "standard" linguistic terms such as "noun", "complex noun > phrase" and "verb", etc., don't suffice. > > I've pointed out that the clarity and unity provided by a single > concept of "predicate with arguments" makes it simpler, and that > introducing "noun", "verb", etc. simply makes the situation more > complex, but it doesn't work with her mindset. > > Please can someone provide me with a few examples where a sumti > cannot be passed of as "just a complex sort of noun"? A sumti is an argument of a predicate, according to the gimste. A phrase which has the same internal grammar as a sumti but is the object of {pe} (which is not a preposition or a case marker) is not a sumti, because the pe-phrase modifies a sumti, not a selbri. That's not an example of a sumti which isn't a complex sort of noun, but an example of the inverse. Sumti are much more often made from verbs than nouns, so it sounds a bit funny to call them noun phrases. phma -- li ze te'a ci vu'u ci bi'e te'a mu du li ci su'i ze te'a mu bi'e vu'u ci