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Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: Trying my first translation ... a few questions.



la .xabyltos. cu cusku di'e
Continuing on, I find that I'm not too sure about identifying amounts.
I'm also not quite sure what to do with "them" in the second sentence.
It seems like it falls into context again.

Bird says
You have lost your toys.  You have lost them all.
.i do zvajuncri lo do keldai .i do zvajuncri ro da

It can be tricky to back-reference in Lojban sometimes, but here you can use {ri} without problems. {ri} picks up the previous sumti (skipping certain pronouns), so in

   do zvajuncri lo do keldai .i do zvajuncri ri
   "You lost your toys. You lost them."

the {ri} would refer to {lo do keldai}.

Now to say "each" of something, you only have to prepend {ro} to it:

   do zvajuncri ro ri
   "You lost each of them."

If you are curious, {ro <sumti>} is equivalent to {ro da poi ke'a menre <sumti>} ("each thing among the referents of <sumti>"). The same applies to any other number you put before a sumti.

And I had also forgotten the title of the book, or I would have
remembered that not everything is tangible that he looses.  I am
assuming that this is where I would need cirko and not zvajuncri.  But
then again, they treat it as a physical thing in the book.  The Mouse
finds it later in the park, and is using it.

"Oh Puppy," says Bird. "You have lost your bark!"
lu .ue doi la cityge'u - sei la cipni cu cusku - do cirko lo ka do
gercmo li'u

{do cirko lo ka ce'u gercmo}. Every {ka}-abstraction contains at least one {ce'u}, and {cirko} knows that when it sees a property in its x2, it will "insert" its x1 into the {ce'u}-slot of the property. {ce'u} is a *bit* like {ke'a}; you don't say {do noi do melbi} but {do noi *ke'a* melbi}. If you're confused, it might be good to seek out some more information about {ka}-abstractions.

As for having to distinguish {cirko} and {zvajuncri} unlike the source text, you have the option of always using {cirko} and adding a {tu'a} in the case of non-properties. I don't know if you have come across {tu'a} yet. {tu'a <sumti>} is short for {lo su'u <sumti> co'e}, that is "an unspecified abstraction involving <sumti>".

This means you can say {cirko tu'a lo bolci} when you mean {cirko lo ka djuno lo du'u lo bolci cu zvati ma kau}, because the latter is an abstraction involving {lo bolci}.

mi'e la selpa'i mu'o

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