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Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 12:30:45 -0800 (PST)
From: John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [lojban] Re: tanru
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This is basically right, but herein some caveeats
and generalizations.

--- Ben Goertzel <ben@goertzel.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> The loquacious beginner will try his unsteady
> hand at answering a question
> again ;-)
> 
> Lojban dictionary says:
> 
> "
> school 4. ckule (kul cu'e): x1 is
> |/institute/academy at x2 teaching
> subject(s) x3 to audience/community x4 operated
> by x5 [also college,
> university]
> "
> 
> So according to my limited knowledge, a nice,
> clear phrasing would be
> 
> ti [cu] ckule fi le cmalu nanla

Probably, {fo} -- small boys are more likely to
be the audience than the subject being taught. 
So
Caveat: tanru are inherently unclear because we
do not know the relationships between the
successive predicates involved.  "Wrap a place
around," the one you suggest for the fourth (or
third) place is a very common one but nmot the
only possibility (and even when it is this,
*which* place gets wrapped is left unclear --
this might be {fu}, a school run by small boys,
for example, as well as either of the two already
set forth).  All that is clear is that it it is a
school somehow related to boys that are somehow
small.  As you say later, this is open to a range
of interpretations.

> 
> But your phrasing in terms of a tanru is also
> correct, though more ambiguous
> as the tanru "cmalu nanla ckule" has a lot of
> possible interpretations
> 
> On the other hand, to say
> 
> This-thing is-small in-dimension-"boy"
> as-compared-with-standard
> "school"
> 
> you could say
> 
> ti cmalu le nanla le ckule
> 
> Here, the English-article-like cmavo "le" marks
> nanla and ckule as sumti
> rather than components of a tanru
> 

Right; an unbroken string of predicates is always
taken as a (left-grouping -- this is not a small
sort of boys' school) tanru, a compound perdicate
built up of the component predicates (somehow or
other).  To fill places in a predicate requires
sumti, which, for the most part, are expressions
beginning with {le/lo/la} and their expansions
(or pronouns or variables).  Lojban is often very
English (not too surprisingly) and so "articles"
are virtually always required to make noun phrases.