[lojban-beginners] Re: jai

[Judson Lester <nyarly@gmail.com>]

Just reviewing the CLL with your question in mind, I (at least) hit on some understanding.

The example in the CLL is: {mi jai rinka le nu do morsi} I cause your death
This example is presented in contrast to: {tu'a mi rinka le nu do morsi} I cause your death

{le nu do morsi} is simple enough: the event-of you die
rinka, however, takes an event-abstraction as it's x1, so the "normal" form of a bridi with rinka should look like
{le nu mi darxi rinka le nu do morsi} which is perhaps more explicit than we want to be.

With {tu'a} I can say "some abstraction involving a sumti" - so {tu'a mi} is something like "something I did" in the context of rinka. In another context, it could me "something characteristic of mine" or "something that happened to me." 

But you asked about {jai}; I'm explaining {tu'a} because {jai} does something similar the other way: instead of rounding {mi} off, {jai} makes a square hole in {rinka} - it modifies the selbri so that its x1 place takes a sumti that fits its abstraction. 

So, where {rinka} is: "the first event is the cause of the second event", {jai rinka} is "an event related to x1 causes the other event."

(as a postscript: How does {palo telgim} work as lojban for "x1"?)

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 4:08 PM, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrote:

So I have had this concept {jai} explained to me at least 4 times now. Each time I leave the chat room/mailing list/wherever honestly believing that "now I get it" only to find a couple days later that it's just as foggy as it was before the explanation. Could I get one last explaniation that explains the theory and a bunch of practical examples for the different uses? Could these examples have as little other grammer as possible to cloud the usage of {jai}?

Additionally, how vital is {jai} to becoming fluent in lojban? Hypothetically, if I never did end up "getting it", how badly would that effect my "fluency" in lojban?