[lojban-beginners] Re: only

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 9:42 AM, tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/9/19 Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>:
>> On Saturday 19 September 2009 07:22:51 Squark Rabinovich wrote:
>
>>> "Only John and Jane went to the moon"
>> la djan. e la djein. po'o klama le lunra
>
> Wouldn't that Lojban mean "The only person who accompanied John in
> going to the moon was Jane"?

(".e" doesn't really imply anything about accompanying, it just says
each of them went, maybe on separate trips.)

> That is:
>
>  da .e [de] po'o broda = da .e fu'e po'o de fu'o broda
>
> rather than
>
>  [da .e de] po'o broda = fu'e po'o da .e de fu'o broda

Yes, "po'o" as a post modifier is rather annoying, because the things
one wants to modify often don't have terminators. The sentence really
means "John went to the moon, and only Jane went to the moon", which
suggests John is also called "Jane". One way around it in this case
would be:

 la djan .e la djein vu'o goi ko'a po'o klama lo lunra

or equivalently without having to use vu'o:

 ko'a po'o goi la djan .e la djein klama lo lunra

Another approach to "only" is "selte'i": "x1 is/are the only one(s)
with property x2 among x3."

 la djan cu selte'i lo ka klama lo lunra
 la djan jo'u la djein cu selte'i lo ka klama lo lunra
 lo se nelci cu selte'i lo ka ka'e vofli

mu'o mi'e xorxes