Re: [lojban-beginners] How to say "face down" or "facing"

["H. Felton" <lojban707@fagricipni.com>]

On Sat, 2011-10-15 at 21:49 -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> On Saturday 15 October 2011 20:00:14 .arpis. wrote:
> > An example sentence is, "I lay down face down on the bed." (as opposed to
> > "I lay down face up on the bed.")
> >
> > {mi pinvre lo ckana fa'a ri} seems to be an incorrect translation, since
> > {fa'a} refers to the direction of the event, not the orientation of the
> > person.
> >
> > Would {mi noi farna lo ckana ku pinvre ri} be better?
> 
> That means "I, who am a direction of the bed, lie horizontally on it.". I 
> think you've found a hole in the vocabulary. I don't remember seeing anything 
> meaning "x1 is oriented in orientation x2", either in the gismu or in the 
> spatial tenses. "farna" says what the direction of x2 from x3 is, but not how 
> either of them is oriented. "carna" says that x1 rotates about axis x2, but 
> not what it points at when it's finished.

I'm not going to pretend that I know enough grammar to attempt 
a translation; but if "farna" is what it is just described as, 
and you really want *face*-down, describing the direction from 
"to'e flira stedu" to "flira" might work; though, for the 
orientation of the, *body* which is what you appear to really 
mean to describe, I'd be more inclined to use "tatru" as a 
reference point; I know that one could question whether men have 
a "tatru" at all (though, they do have what could be described 
as vestigial mammary *glands*), but even still one could be 
taken, in a tanru at least, as meaning the direction of the 
torso on which other humans "tatru" normally are if the 
particular human does not have "tatru"; eg, male, too young, had 
a mastectomy, etc.


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