Re: [jboske] kau

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

And Rosta scripsit:

> As you know, if I am guided by meaning rather than usage then 
> "le stedu be mi", "each of (a) certain head(s) of mine", also
> implies you have more than one head, else why the need for universal
> quantification, and why the need for specificity -- that is, why
> the need to invoke a particular le'i stedu be mi, when you are
> in fact talking about the membership of lo'i stedu be mi?

I think that the trouble here is not with "le stedu" but with "be mi",
which is malglico. "Er setzte die Hände in die Taschen ein"
is the normal way to say "He put his hands in his pockets" in German;
whose pockets would he put his hands in, after all (or vice versa).
I believe I warn about this overspecification of possession (or any
restriction, really) somewhere in CLL. In context, "le stedu cu se cortu"
should be plenty for "My head hurts".

> Without checking the book, I am guessing that the objection to your
> use of ti is based on mabla anti-malglico tradition -- in this 
> instance, the notion that ti with a textual referent is insufficiently
> deictic.

I have no trouble with "ti" pointing to a *text*, but making it point to
the referent of the text is more shaky. "ti" is supposed to be tied to
physical pointing: "ti du'u le xanto cu barda" seems very dodgy to me.

-- 
John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com http://www.reutershealth.com
"Not to know The Smiths is not to know K.X.U." --K.X.U.