[lojban-beginners] Re: alice questions

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 8/17/05, Chris Capel <pdf23ds@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, what I was getting at was, why is the {se} necessary, and why
> doesn't it change the meaning to "pink body with eyes"? 
Wouldn't {poi
> xunblabi kanla} mean "pink eyed" or "with pink eyes"?

{lo blabi ractu poi xunblabi kanla ke'a} would mean that.
But when {ke'a} is not explicit, the most common 
interpretation is that it fills the first empty slot, so my 
first take on {lo blabi ractu poi xunblabi kanla} might
be "a white rabbit which is a pink eye", i.e. 
{lo blabi ractu poi ke'a xunblabi kanla}.

The intent was {lo blabi ractu poi [ke'a] xunblabi se kanla}.

> > > Oh, and why the {poi}? Oughtn't it be {lo blabi ractu noi kanla
> > > noi xunblabi}?
> >
> > (The two noi's there modify {lo blabi ractu}.)
> 
> Is there a way to nest poi/noi clauses?

The problem is that {kanla} there is not a sumti, and you
can't attach a noi clause to a selbri. 

(The normal way of attaching more than one clause to 
the same sumti is by joining the clauses with {zi'e},
so {ko'a noi broda noi brode} is ungrammatical, it has
to be {ko'a noi broda zi'e noi brode}, but because 
clauses can be attached before and after the {ku} to
a sumti like {lo broda ku}, this allows 
{lo broda noi brode [ku] noi brodi} which is like what 
you have there.)
 
> > I don't see a problem with {poi} here. It restricts the sense of {blabi ractu}
> > to just those that have pink eyes.
> 
> It feels uncomfortable to me because the restrictive sense doesn't
> seem to be adding any information, and as a listener I would wonder
> whether I were missing some subtlety that required the {poi} to
> communicate something.

{poi} would be strange if we already had {lo blabi ractu}
identified, but if I remember right this is the first time it appears,
so I don't see a problem with making the eyes part of the
identification information. What else could it communicate?
When would you use {poi}? 

(There is also a difference between {lo broda noi brode [ku]}
and {lo broda ku noi brode}. To use {noi} here would require
a {ku} otherwise we would be saying that white rabbits
have pink eyes irrespective of this white rabbit in particular. 
I don't know that I want to insist on this (mis?)feature of {noi}, 
but it probably influenced me at the time. See
<http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=BPFK+Section%3A+Subordinators>
for more than you probably want to know.)

mu'o mi'e xorxes