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Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:59:42 +0000
Message-ID: <4de8c3931002181759n1d04ecc0vdfefb2a82e0ec1b0@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Not needing terminators
From: tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
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On 19 February 2010 01:21, Ian Johnson <blindbravado@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to work out when you need and don't need terminators. For
> example, here's a sentence I wrote today:
> xu do se nandu lonu do tavla mi fo la lojban. lonu do tatpi
> In idiomatic English, what I'm intending here is: "Do you find it difficult
> to talk with me in Lojban when you are tired?"
> I put this sentence into jbofi'e and it appears to have parsed it the way I
> intended. However, when writing it, I was not sure if I needed to have a
> {kei} after {la lojban.}. I know {cu} makes it so you don't need terminators
> in situations like these, but what exactly makes it so that {lonu do tatpi}
> does not run into the {tavla} clause here? Is it that the place structure of
> {tavla} has now been exhausted (since I just filled the x4 place and there
> is no x5 place)? jbofi'e makes me seem to think this; changing {fo} to {fi}
> without adding a {kei} creates (according to jbofi'e) a rather nonsensical
> sentence in which {lonu do tatpi} is the x4 of {tavla}.

That's what I would think as well.


> Also, just subjectively, is it somewhat..."polite" to include a {kei} here
> even though it's not grammatically needed?

I guess so. But I would prefer {ca} or {va'o}. It wouldn't pull {lonu
do tatpi} along out of the {tavla} level onto the {nandu} level, but
that wouldn't be a problem either.

> Certainly including every last
> terminator would not be, but where is the line where grammatically redundant
> terminators also became practically redundant?

For that, I usually just listen to my intuition and feeling.


mu'o mi'e tijlan