[lojban-beginners] Re: using 'se' in conversation

[tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>]

2009/10/5 Oren <get.oren@gmail.com>:
>>>The most literal translation of the English is "mi pu noroi viska da
>>>poi na se nelci be mi" (I have up-to-now 0-times seen something which
>>>it was not true it is liked by me)
>>>
>>>Â Â Â Â Â --gejyspa
>
> ki'esai .i mulno ...(is there a lujvo for "comprehensive" or "thorough?"
> =p)
>
> that was just the explanation I was looking for!
>
> one follow up question regarding:
>
> .i mi pu noroi viska da poi na se nelci be mi
> (I have up-to-now 0-times seen something such that it's not true that
> said-thing is liked by me)
> ((I've never seen something I haven't liked))

"be" is actually redundant (but not ungrammatical) in that poi clause.


> ...if i wanted to make this sentence sound more chinese with a topic-comment
> structure, how close can we get the lojban word order to align to it?
>
> Chinese/English gloss
>
> ääæäåæçäèïæäæææçè
> ää, æ , ä , åæ , ç , äèïæ , äæ , ææ , çè
> yige, wo, bu , xihuan , de , dongxi ïwo , conglai , meiyou , kanguo
> a, I, not , like, [adjectival-phrase] , thing , ï, I , up-til-now , haven't
> , seen
>
> I don't know how I can put 'I-do-not-like' *in front* of lojban's "da" ...
> here's my attempt at reversing the sentence ignoring that feature though:
>
> .i da poi na se nelci be mi cu be mi pu noroi se viska
> (something which is not liked by me, has by-me up-to-now 0-times been seen)

I think we should be able to add a descriptor to the pro-sumti in that case:

 .i lo poi mi na nelci ku'o da [cu] pu noroi se viska

(It's closer to the Chinese with "mi" before "nelci".) The current
parsers won't validate it. But, if i remember right, i saw xorxes
suggesting a form to that effect.

This alignment, where modifiers (dependents) come before a nucleus
(head), is called 'left-branching', as opposed to 'right-branching'.
Apart from Chinese, examples of left-branching languages are Japanese,
Turkish, Tamil, Basque, etc. If we are to seek more linguistic
neutrality & versatility in Lojban, we want the combination of
'descriptor + pro-sumti' officially acknowledged (supposing it has not
yet been).

Speaking of "se" and left-branching, also the following form may be of
interest to speakers/learners of Chinese or other left-branching
languages:

 lo mlatu sepe lo ratcu
 ççé (Chinese)
 çãé (Japanese)

This is the (experimental) inverse of "lo ratcu pe lo mlatu" to get
the left-branching alignment with "se" swapping the sumti. And this is
one thing which other major conlangs such as Esperanto cannot imitate;
you cannot change the order of nouns in "rato de kato"
(right-branching), unless some clitic like the one in English is
invented:

 the cat's rat


mu'o mi'e tijlan