[lojban-beginners] Re: ri and .e

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 6/12/08, namor <eldrikdo@gmail.com> wrote:
> In: {ko'a e ko'e cu bu'a .i ri cu bu'e}, does {ri} refer to {ko'e} or {ko'a e
> ko'e} as a whole?

If you had asked about {lo nixli .e lo nanla}, then {ri} would refer
to just the boy. But in the case of {ko'a .e ko'e} it's not so clear because
CLL says: "Certain sumti are ignored by ``ri''; specifically, most of the
other cmavo of KOhA, and the almost-grammatically-equivalent lerfu
words of selma'o BY."  So presumably {ri} will ignore {ko'e}. I don't know
whether it ignores the {ko'a .e ko'e} combination or not.

> In the latter's the case, how can you refer to a ko'a or ko'e alone?

They are already pronouns, so you would just use them. The more
difficult question is how to refer to {lo nixli .e lo nanla} as a whole.
Even that can be managed with {lo go'i} in this case. But there are
more tricky cases:

  lo nixli cu penmi lo nanla lo panka .i ba bo ??? klama lo zarci
  "A girl meets a boy in the park. Then they go to the market."

There is nothing to use for "they" here, short of some clumsy
stuff like {lo go'i jo'u lo se go'i}. The experimental cmavo {xai}
has been proposed for these cases.
<http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Currently+Proposed+Experimental+Cmavo>

Here is another hard case:

  lo nixli .e lo nanla cu lumci vo'a

Who washes whom?

mu'o mi'e xorxes