[lojban-beginners] Re: .imu'ibo

[Kevin Reid <kpreid@mac.com>]

On Mar 21, 2010, at 19:07, chris kerr wrote:

> Why was this xoxes?  If "pu" had equaled "fi'o purci" it seems like
> everything would have been more intuitive.  Personally I find it odd
> that the sumti that "pu" eats (when it's not in front of a selbri), is
> what's in the future.

The sumti that "pu" eats, as you put it, is the *reference point*.  
Remember that what is being *said* is the main bridi; the sumti of  
"pu" tells you "in the past with respect to what?"

Here's an incremental example: starting with the simple

  pu broda

we have "broda occurred in the past". If we convert, syntactically,  
the selbri tag into a sumti tag,

  pu ku broda

and move this term (tagged sumti) to the end of the sentence

  broda pu ku

the meaning is still the same, and is the same (or almost, depending  
on what you want to think about "explicitly unspecified" vs. "now") as

  broda pu zo'e

-- "occurred in the past with respect to some unspecified reference  
point". Now if we specify that reference point,

  broda pu lo nu brode

we have "broda occurred before brode". Also, this is exactly the same as

  pu lo nu brode kei broda

"before brode, broda"; the latter just happens to need another  
terminator.

--
Kevin Reid                                  <http://switchb.org/kpreid/>