[lojban-beginners] Re: Yitzik asks his first questions

["Vid Sintef" <picos.picos@gmail.com>]

On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Isaac Penzev <isaacp@ukr.net> wrote:
>> mi ponse lo cnino karce
>
> That's what I would expect.
> On the other hand, animate objects (persons) aren't usually "owned" (expect
> of slavery societies zo'o). I understand you versions for "I've got a wife
> and two children" as occasional. Does it mean we need paraphrases every time
> when the object of "have" is animate, or there may be some other standard
> approaches?

The notion of "X owning/having an object Y" is actually peculiar. In
Lojban, it's often effectual to first deconstruct such conventions of
natlangs into a more neutral sense of "X relates / is related to Y in
a certain way". In fact, in "У меня есть карандаш." and "У меня есть
сестра.", a word for "is" (есть) is used instead of "have" as in
English, so I can imagine this particular Lojbanic objectivity in
question wouldn't seem as strange to Russian speakers as to native
English speakers. And close translations of these sentences would be
something like:

.i ra'a mi zasti fa lo pinsi

.i ra'a mi zasti fa lo mensi

The second one doesn't mention the biological relation between {mi}
and {lo mensi} in any obvious way, but that's what "У меня есть
сестра." is about. This Russian (Slavic) perspective of "есть" is also
shared by Japanese: "私には妹がいます。 / Watashi-niwa Imouto-ga imasu.",
literally "Mi-to Sister exist".

I feel {jai} bears some interesting possibilities in this kind of expressions.

>> da cukta ga'u le jubme
>
> That may be better. Although it seems a bit literal, and "above" is not
> exactly the same as "upon".

You can combine {re'o}: {ga'ure'o le jubme}.

> What about topic-comment approach here, e.g. {lo
> cukta zo'u ri cpana le jubme}?

That's grammatical. But I would tend to take it to be connoting that
the book's existence, raised by {zo'u}, has been more or less expected
by the speaker, where "the book" would have been used instead of "a
book" in the English.

>> .e'a pei mi samkelci ti
>
> Is the emotional {pei} obligatory here?

{.e'a mi samkelci ti} would be affirmative not interrogative, and its
emotion be the speaker's not the listener's; i.e. the speaker
self-permits playing the computer game.


mu'o mi'e tijlan