Re: [lojban-beginners] Several beginner's questions

[Alex Rozenshteyn <arozens1@jhu.edu>]

So it turns out that there are strict rules, but they are not transformations of the text.

I think it's actually easier to explain with (e.g.) {ta}.

{ta} is defined to be the thing at which you are pointing, so if I say {.i ta mo}, you have to notice what I'm pointing at to figure out what I'm asking about. If I ask {xu do nelci ta}, I'm asking you if you like the thing I'm pointing at. Once I've identified it by pointing, it doesn't matter where I point, because the thing I was referring to at the moment I asked the question doesn't change. If you say {go'i}, all the same things are still in the sentence, so even though you may have been pointing at something else (or at nothing at all), it didn't change what you agreed to liking. If, on the other hand, you say {go'i ta}, you're commenting that you like some different thing, which you are identifying by pointing at, which may happen to be the same thing I pointed to, but isn't necessarily.

Similarly, the word {mi} identifies a thing (namely the person or group of people saying it) and {do} identifies a thing (the person or group of people being addressed). Once you've said them, the words have performed their duty and are no longer relevant, but the things they identify stay as part of the meaning of the sentence.

If I ask {xu do nelci lo najnimre} (Do you like oranges?), anyone who says {go'i} is repeating the meaning of the sentence, namely that "you", the person to whom {do} referred at the time I said it, like oranges.

Does that help?

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 2:38 AM, gleki <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm not going to work on the Bible. Too difficult for me yet.

I just didn't find this word "parcatu" anywhere on the web. It's not in jbovlaste either.

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