[lojban-beginners] Re: grammar check for my first few sentences

[Stela Selckiku <selckiku@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 12:09 PM, komfo,amonan <komfoamonan@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've noticed a practice on IRC that limits the contents of {lu ...
> li'u} to full bridi. But the restriction is actually only that the
> contents be grammatical (CLL 19:9).


I think of it somewhat differently.  I don't just think of lu/li'u as
quotes for grammatical texts, and lo'u/le'u as quotes for
ungrammatical texts, like it's just mandatory marking of whether
things are grammatical.  I think of them as quoting two different
kinds of things.  With lu/li'u you're quoting an utterance, a proper
statement in Lojban, but with lo'u/le'u you're just quoting a string
of Lojban words.

I do know that "le munje" is a valid Lojbanic statement-- it's a
sumti-only statement, the kind of statement we use for answering
questions.  So I would certainly quote it with lu/li'u if I was saying
for instance that someone said "le munje" in answer to a question:

.i ko'a cusku lu mi nelci li'u   (ko'a said, "I like something.")
.i lu do ma nelci li'u selsku ko'e   ("What do you like," said ko'e.)
.i selsku ko'a fa lu le munje li'u   (said ko'a, "the universe.")

On the other hand, there are times when I'd want to quote the two word
sequence "le munje" as just a sequence of words.  For instance:

ko'a:   mi nelci le monji    (I like the unevirse.)
ko'e:   xu do djisku lo'u le munje le'u    (Did you mean to say "the universe"?)

There I would find it strange to say "lu le munje li'u", the
grammatical self-standing utterance "le munje", because to me it would
be like saying: Instead of that full bridi, did you intend to just say
the sumti "le munje"?


This may indeed be a subtle deviation between IRC Lojban and book
Lojban.  I suspect many such exist.  I do think it's probably best to
attempt to reconcile any divergences we notice, but I also think it's
probably best if we're descriptive at times, to give our earnest
students here knowledge that carries over into the real world, such as
it is, of jbogu'e. :)


mu'o se sinma te karni mi'e selkik