[lojban-beginners] Re: Hello, and owning things..

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

On 7/31/08, Mark <mark@antelope.nildram.co.uk> wrote:

> MA>  xorlo is the proposal to change the meaning of le and lo.

Not exactly their meanings, just the assumption that they carry
hidden default quantifiers with them.

> But that page also emphasised something
> that I wondered about to - if I say "le melbi ninmu" it means a woman
> that I'm thinking of, who I think is beautiful (and is a woman!),

It's a reference to something(s) or someone(s) that you describe
as "melbi ninmu". You presumably are choosing that description
because you think it will be useful for your audience to identify
the thing(s) you have in mind.

> but
> potentially no-one else does.  Because there is no universally agreed
> standard of beauty, is it illegal to say "lo melbi ninmu"?

"lo melbi ninmu" is a perfectly good way to talk about "beautiful women",
be that in general or the particular ones in a given context.

> I know
> that melbi can take the "standard of beauty" as an argument but
> inserting that into "lo melbi ninmu" would require a relative clase
> (right?)

If you want to call attention to a standard explicitly, you could say
"lo melbi be fo da ninmu". Doing do so would suggest to me that the
standard was somehow remarkable, so it probably wouldn't work
very well as a compliment.

mu'o mi'e xorxes