[lojban-beginners] Re: la/le

["Jon \"Top Hat\" Jones" <eyeonus@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 10:44 PM, M CHILDS <m_chi919@msn.com> wrote:

I'm still having trouble understanding la and le... so for instance

ninmu is a selbri
and le would be a sumti

le ninmu

and the structure of ninmu is
 x1 is a woman

so for the distinction between THE and A?
and why is someone's name x1 = la?

and why are le and la necessary if they are place holders for the object, when the selbri describes that object?

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Anything which can conceivably occupy the x1 of a gismu can be {le gismu}. {cribe}, by itself, for example, is an observative, as in "Bear!", just as {fagri} is "Fire!". Using a gismu in this way is what's called an observative. (As a side note, {cribe} actually means {zo'e cribe zo'e}: "something is a bear of species something", and is a brivla.)

{le cribe} means "the bear", that is, a particular bear that you have in mind, whether it be the stuffed bear you had as a kid, or the bear that ate your porridge. This is different from {cribe} in that you are indicating one particular bear. It can be anything that you, the speaker, would call a bear, whether it be an actual bear or not.

{la cribe} means "Bear", as in something which is named Bear, whether that be Frank Bear, the author, a large dog named Bear (which, I believe, one of us has), or even a plane named Bear. This is different from both {cribe} and {le cribe} in that you are indicating something which may not have any resemblance to a bear, but for whatever reason bears the name. (Ugh, a pun....)

There is also {lo cribe}, which means "a bear", that is, anything which could conceivably be a bear. In this case, you are not indicating anything in particular, but a general class. In this case, your teddy bear could not (arguably) be {lo cribe}, Frank Bear certainly would not, but the black bears of the Americas and the one that ate your porridge are all {lo cribe}.

{la}, {le}, and {lo} are what are known as articles: they alert the listener that that which follows is a referrent, and also perform the task of converting a gismu into a sumti.

Take, for instance, the two sentences:

ninmu clite
woman-ish type-of being polite (A feminine kind of politeness?)
x1 is a woman-ish type-of being polite in matter x2 according to custom x3

le ninmu cu clite
the woman is polite
the woman is polite in matter x2 according to custom x3

In the first sentence, ninmu combines with clite in what is called a tanru, which is simlar to a metaphor or compound word, whereas in the second the article {le} turns ninmu into a sumti whitch fills in the x1 of {clite}.

I hope I'm not confusing anyone....

-- 
mu'o mi'e .topy'at.

.i.a'o.e'e ko klama le bende pe denpa bu