[lojban-beginners] Re: Debug my propaganda?

["Turniansky, Michael" <MICHAEL.A.TURNIANSKY@saic.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org [mailto:lojban-beginners-
> bounce@lojban.org] On Behalf Of Karl Naylor
> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 11:27 AM
> To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
> Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Debug my propaganda?
> 
> On 19/03/07, Turniansky, Michael <MICHAEL.A.TURNIANSKY@saic.com>
wrote:
> 
> >   So you are implying that you can never say (or write) "lo bratu ca
> > carvi" (It's snowing) because at some point in time or space that
> > statement is not true?  Nonsense...
> 
> Not at all.  I'm not sure how you inferred that from what I said.  If
> anything, I think I was saying the opposite: that "lo bratu cu carvi"
> is always true, because this has happened many times, is probably
> happening somewhere right now and probably will happen again, and I
> could be referring to any of those times/places.
(please note I said "ca" not "cu".  Of course "lo bratu cu carvi" is
true, because snow does precipitate.  My point was that you rejected (in
your earlier understanding) "lenu mi tadni la lojban cu jeftu li pavo"
because at some point it would not be true all the time.  And maybe you
are correct, because of "cu", but I don't believe so.  I believe it can
still be taken be true as of the time of utterance.  Similarly if my son
were to make the statement "mi verba" that would be true, even though it
was not true 20 years ago, and will not be true 20 years from now.


> 
> By a similar token, I figure that (still assuming that my studying
> eventually lasts 6 months) "lonu mi tadni cu masti li xa" is always
> true, no matter when you say it.  And this was the reason for me
> thinking that "lonu mi tadni cu jeftu li pavo" would be false; because
> the event actually lasts six months, independent of what time the
> statement is made.  However, I've now changed my mind because I
> believe that there's an elided interval {ze'epu} in that statement,
> which does take account of the speaker's temporal location.
> 
> > > lenu mi ze'epu tadni la lojban. jeftu li pavo
> > (You are missing a "cu" (or other sumti/selbri separator) before the
> > jeftu, but otherwise, yes)
> 
> Hmm, thought I'd be OK without any separator here because {tadni} has
> already appeared and swallowed up {la lojban.}; therefore {jeftu}
> cannot be the selbri of {la lojban.}, so it must be the selbri of
> {lenu}.  Or is this ambiguous because {la lojban.} could be the x2 of
> {jeftu}?

  No, it's because once again you're forgetting that "nu..." is a
selbri.  "nu....jeftu" becomes a tanru.  (A me-having-studied-lojban
type of weeks).  Therefore you have two sumtis ("le nu...jeftu" and "li
pavo"), and no selbris.

         --gejyspa