[lojban-beginners] Re: Adjectival predicative

[Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>]

On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 5:12 PM, tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Angry" as in "He seems angry" is linguistically called "adjectival
> predicative of the subject", supplementing "he". This may be expressed
> in Lojban as a seltau with little confusion: ko'a fengu simlu. There
> is another type called "adjectival predicative of the object", as
> "white" in "He painted the door white", supplementing "the door"
> rather than "he". How would Lojban express this, maintaining the
> exclusive relation between "the door" and "white" (which cannot be
> realized with a tanru), without turning the predicative into an
> argument/sumti (so no "ko'a broda lo vorme lo blabi")?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicative_(adjectival_or_nominal)
>

  I think the problem here is that you refer to an "exclusive relation
between 'the door' and 'white'".  But I think that's chimerical.
There is no relationship between the door and white outside of the
action at hand.  "White" hasn't anything to do with the door, it has
to do with the act of painting.  So either "ko'a blabi cintypu'i le
vorme" or "ko'a cintypu'i le vorme tai lo blabi" (or yes, the
for-some-reason-dreaded-by-you "ko'a cintypu'i le vorme lo blabi").
Just because a grammatical construct exists in language A doesn't mean
it exists in lojban (like "noun" ;-))   Notice what wikipedia says:
"predicative is an element of the predicate of a sentence which
supplements the subject or object _by means of the verb_"  It's part
of the verb, so yes, that's exactly what the sumti places or modals
do.

              --gejyspa