[lojban-beginners] Re: attempt at translation

[Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:
>
> On Thursday 17 September 2009 14:35:55 Ryan Leach wrote:
> > lu mi pu tirna da'e ra'i da'e goi mi pa'upatfu .ije mi pa'upatfu go'e
> > .ije do'i rapli nu so'i pano nanca .i
>
> I was stumped by the first sentence, but it parses. It means "ÂI heard it
> (which is something I'll say later) from it (which is something I'll say
> later) which is IÂ is a father with a component".

  Actually, it doesn't parse.  "mi pu tirna da'e ra'i da'e goi mi
pa'u" is fine, but "patfu" is an illegal  second selbri in the main
sentence.  "tirna" is the selbri.

  One thing I'm not sure if Ryan caught here is that "pa'upatfu" isn't
a lujvo formed from"patfu patfu", because the pa'u part "falls off"
the front of patfu.  The rule is that if CVV,CV'V, or CV at the
beginning of an ostensible lujvo can be removed as a cmavo, leaving a
legal word, it is interpreted that way (this is the so-called
"tosmabru test" (See the CLL, chaper 4, section 11, part 5)).  In
those cases, the first rafsi must be "glued on" to the rest with a
"hyphen" (y (for an intial  CVC rafsi),r,or n, (if the next part
starts with r)).  So "pa'upatfu" should have been "pa'urpatfu" in
order to parse correctly.  But considered even better is the "lowest
scoring" lujvo form, which is "pafpa'u" in this case.

>From Ryan:
>pe'u ko sidju mi cu lo cilre .i ko cikre mi loi fanva

  This isn't grammatical, etiher.

"cu" should appear directly before the selbri (the predicate
relationship), in this case "sidju".  In addition, since you want help
with  "learning", not a learner", it's an event abstraction, "lo nu
cilre", so the first sentence is
pe'u ko [cu] sidju mi lo nu cilre  (The "cu" is elidable here, because
it's preceded by a pro-sumti, so that can't latch onto the "sidju" in
a tanru)

  The second sentence, while grammatical, asks the listener to be fix
you in order to be used for translator purposes.  But I suspect all
you want is your translation fixed, so "ko cikre lo mi xelfanva (or
"xe fanva")"

         --gejyspa