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Re: [lojban-beginners] precise tenru

On 26 September 2014 00:26, TR NS <transfire@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thursday, September 25, 2014 10:56:14 PM UTC-4, tsani wrote:

Right. Metaphorical tanru can be generalized to tanru of the first type, but with a less straightforward composition, possibly including many omitted other selbri. 

That seems weird to me.

I would expect the seltau and the tertau to have some relation such that Xi = Yj, or multiple such equalities. The participle should also be possible value, so call that X0 and Y0, and the equation still holds. So then the vagueness lies solely in these index mappings.


I don't really understand your expectation. Tanru alone guarantee nothing more than that their place structure is given by the final component. That's why I have interpretation schemes. Are you suggesting that all a (metaphorical) tanru does is line up sumti places somehow? It turns out that's not how tanru are commonly used, beyond lining up the x1, but in the case of compositional tanru (type 1), it's not the tanru doing that usually; the selbri performing function application is what lines up the x1.
 
Allowing for any number of "omitted selbri", strikes me a taking it too far --one could mean almost anything then.

That's the beauty of it. You could mean almost anything with it, and due to that you mean next to nothing. Context is paramount in interpreting these kinds of tanru. Naturally, the more selbri you expect the listener to infer, the less likely it is that what you mean to say and what the listener interprets will be alike. This is one of those very vague features of Lojban, like {zo'e} or {co'e}, and I hardly see people pointing out that they're impossible to use conversationally. Theoretically, you could mean anything, but in practice, you don't.
 
.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

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