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From: Adam Lopresto <adam@cec.wustl.edu>
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: (No References: <200302220519.h1M5Jfs6000898@miriam.letu.edu>
In-reply-to: <200302220519.h1M5Jfs6000898@miriam.letu.edu> 
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 10:36:40 -0600
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.e'unai mi se cnino la lojban.

> li pamoi
> .i xu kakne lenu lo tanru se finti fo la'o gy. pro sumti gy.
> 
> In case that's wrong, here's what I wanted:  Can tanru be made with pro-sumti
> ?  The particular 
> sentence that brought this to mind was, "Hungry, I come to the table."  There
> 're probably better 
> ways--which I'd like to see, also--to translate the thought, but I wanted to 
> know whether tanru 
> even can be used with pro-sumti.

No, I don't think you can.  A tanru can only be made out of a combination of
brivla, and a pro-sumti represents a sumti, not a brivla (to my mind, an
instanciation, a noun, instead of a relationship).

> (le mi xagji) means "my hungerer," so what would be "the hungry me"?

I'd use "mi noi xagji cu klama le jubme".  (I, who hungers, go to the table.)

> li remoi
> Do place tags loop?  (mi klama fu le karce va vi) probably is just bad, but I
>  had the late-night 
> idea that the last two sumti might be interpreted as x2 and x3, the next left
> over places.

Don't believe so.  I think if you fall off the end, you just fall off the end.

> li cimoi
> "A sqare is a rectangle but not vice versa."
> Good Lojban translations & even attempts at similar word order, both requeste
> d.

Hmmm.  I'm not sure about the vice versa in this case.  Actually, the words for
square (kubykarfa) and rectangle (karfa) make the statement seem almost as odd
as "An equilateral triangle is a triangle, but not vice versa."  The reason it
gets said in English is people hear "rectangle" and think of clakurfa
(non-square-rectangle).  

ro kubykurfa cu kurfa .iku'i su'o kurfa cu na kubykurfa

or you could use sets

lo'i kubykurfa cu nalrolmeilei lo'i kurfa

(the set of squares is a proper subset of the set of rectangles)

> li vomoi
> .i xamgu fa lenu pilno zo ka .onai zo nu kei mu'u ma
> I read the the action-vs.-quality part of Nick&Robin's lessons, but I'm not c
> lear on it at all.  
> It'd be great if you could point me to more.

Chapter 11 of the reference grammar
(http://www.lojban.org/publications/reference_grammar/chapter11.html) does a
pretty good job with the abstrators, I think.  

> li mumoi
> What's the meaning of "this" in "What's the meaning of this?"?
> Not ti/ta/tu or vi/va/vu, but the recent situation.

I don't know...Of course, the question in English usually isn't asking for
meaning, anyway.  Perhaps a good translation would be something very
nonliteral, like 

.uanai ki'u ma mo

"What's happening here, and why?"

But I'm sure someone with a bit more experience could do better.

> li xamoi
> .i tu'a lo tanru cu cfipu mi leka ce'u zunle ce'u kei .a leka pritu
> tanru feel different from the rest of the language that I know thus far, beca
> use it seems each 
> new part of the tanru changes the interpretation of the word that came before
> .
> 
> (do spuda) You reply.  (do spuda melbi) You're beautiful at replying.
> In more complicated examples, the listener would initially think the first wo
> rd of the tanru was 
> the selbri and start interpreting the sumti which he's already heard accordin
> g to that word, but 
> then wait! there's more, and the sumti would need to be reconsidered.  Oh, ye
> ah: the question 
> was, What's the best way to get the hang of tanru?

Hmmmm, I find it no harder than English.  It's the same problem as processing
"He's a criminal attorney," and not seeing redundancy.

> Finally, would "selpamoi" etc. or something else be better introductions for 
> a numbered list?

na djuno
-- 
Adam Lopresto (adam@cec.wustl.edu)
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

I am a peripheral visionary; I can see into the future, but only way off to the sides.