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Re: [lojban-beginners] Differenes between “ka” and “nu”
la'o me. Erik Natanael Gustafsson .me cusku di'e
Is ka used generally and nu for specific events? Can I rephrase the
translations like this:
1. {mi gleki lo ka tavla do} = I get glad when talking to you
(regardless of whether I am doing it right now).
2. {mi gleki lo nu tavla do} = I am glad because of this single event of
talking to you.
What you put in a sumti place generally doesn't affect what tense the
main bridi is in. {mi gleki} means I'm actually happy, no matter what
other sumti appear in the sentence (as long as no irrealis attitudinals
or {da'i} appears).
There aren't many places where more than one abstractor can be used
sensibly. Usually any given place is defined (or implicitly understood
by regular users of the language) to have exactly one type of sumti that
can be put in it. The idea that more than one abstractor type can be
used, or that an abstraction and a concrete sumti can both go in a place
(sometimes referred to as "polymorphism") did not find many supporters.
Even though I am one of the people who originally suggested {djica lo
ka}, I no longer use it, and now use {djica lo nu} and {.aidji lo ka}.
To me {djica} means "x1 wants x2 to happen", and a property cannot happen.
Similar things can be said about {gleki lo ka}. If {gleki} means "x1 is
happy that x2 is the case or that x2 happens" then {gleki lo ka}
automatically becomes questionable.
One reason why {lo ka} even crops up in these places is that people try
to avoid having to repeating sumti, the {ka} is supposed to auto-insert
the sumti for them, but this causes problems when using {ka} in places
where you don't want the {ce'u} to be "filled", where you don't want the
{ka}-property to be applied to any outside sumti. {nelci} is such an
example. {mi nelci lo ka limna} could mean "I like the property of
swimming", "I like swimmingness", without any indication or claim that
the speaker is swimming. The aforementioned practice of forcing {lo ka}
to supply its {ce'u} with an outside sumti removes this reading and
replaces it with "I like to swim", "I like it when I swim", but for a
big price. Moreover, unless you want {lo ka} to be ambiguous or
context-dependent, you need to define for each brivla how it interacts
with {lo ka} vs how it interacts with {lo nu} etc. It is easier and
cleaner for a language like Lojban to split the two meanings into two
separate brivla, one that uses {nu} and one that uses {ka}.
Now, your question:
> Is ka used generally and nu for specific events?
No. The difference lies elsewhere. {ka} is related to {du'u}, but has a
{ce'u} place, making it an incomplete bridi, while {nu} is a physical
manifestation (actual or hypothetical) of a bridi. {ka} and {du'u} are
not physical.
mi'e la selpa'i mu'o
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