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Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: Trying my first translation ... a few questions.
On Tuesday, September 1, 2015 at 11:33:11 AM UTC-4, selpa'i wrote:la .xabltos. cu cusku di'e
> So we are currently gathering friends to find Puppy's toys. My question
> today concerns the connective that I need to use with selbri. I think
> that I need je in this case, but am not positive.
>
> "Oh, Duck," says Frog. Let's go and look for Puppy's bark."
> .i lu doi datka - sei la pipybafli cu cusku - ma'a kalama je sisku lo ka
> ko'a gercmo li'u
Here you want to connect so-called bridi-tails, not selbri. A bridi tail
is a selbri + the sumti and other things that follow it. Using brackets,
you want to say {ma'a [klama] AND [sisku lo ka ko'a gercmo]}, but if you
use {je} there then you get {[klama] AND [sisku]} and {lo ka ko'a
gercmo} falls into both sisku's x2 and klama's x2.
To connect bridi tails you use {gi'e} (every connective has different
forms depending on whether you want to connect sumti, selbri,
bridi-tails and whether it's forethought or afterthought).
{ma'a klama gi'e sisku lo ka ko'a gercmo}
Having said that, there are two things that still need to be fixed in
your sentence.
First, has the {ko'a} been assigned in a previous sentence? More
importantly, {ko'a} doesn't go into a {ka} abstraction like that. In
{ka} you use {ce'u}, just like you would use {ke'a} in a relative
clause. That would be {lo ka ce'u gercmo}, and this means "the property
of being someone who barks". Maybe not what you're after, but it could
get complicated here, because if the dog is searching for a property,
and not for a thing having that property, then you'll end up with a
double {ka}: {sisku lo ka ce'u ka ce'u gercmo}.
I had established la cmalu cityge'u as ko'a in the first sentence in the book, as I figured he would be referenced quite often. Does KOhA have a narrower range of reference than I thought? Would there be another way to reference Puppy, or should I just scrap that and used la cityge'u instead? As for ka, I think that my fingers were on automatic, as I had wanted to say nu. However, I am really getting the feel of, if the abstraction doesn't fit into one of the NU abstractions, I am better off with tu'a. However, I'm still reading though it all so that I get a better understanding of it all.
The other thing is that Frog is trying to motivate Duck to undertake an
action. Your sentence however is a statement. You should add {.e'e} or
{.e'u} in the beginning.
Attitudinals ... something else I was thinking about, but just hadn't really added in. I did before with .ue only because I saw it as a replacement for the "!" at the end of the sentence. I'm going to see about making myself a nice list of them that I can hang on my wall.
See:
https://mw.lojban.org/papri/BPFK_Section:_Irrealis_Attitudinals#cmavo:_.e.27e_.28UI1.29
Maybe I'd say:
.i «lu .e'e doi la datka —sei la pipybanfi cu cusku— ma'a klama gi'e
sisku tu'a lo ka gercmo li'u»
> I used ma'asince contextually, we have Puppy, Bird, Frog, and Duck, and
> not just Frog and Duck (mi'o).
Good.
> My only other concern was "look for". Initially, I thought that it
> would be viska, but then I stopped and thought about it some. About
> what they were really trying to accomplish. And I came up with sisku,
> and they are searching for something, not necessarily looking at it.
Like with {cirko}, some people use {sisku}'s x2 as a property, so
{sisku} means "x1 looks among the referents of x3 for ones that have
property x2".
Usually those people then use a different word when they are looking for
a concrete object, because then it's about trying to find out what a
things location is. Things like {zvasisku} and even {mitysisku} exist
for that.
I had seen/considered mitysisku, but thought that something more general would work out alright. I'm really beginning to sense a difference between physical and non-physical concepts in Lojban. Something that I will really need to consider going forward.
Relatedly, finding an object is {zvafa'i} ("discover where something
is"), while "finding out a fact" is just {facki}.
mi'e la selpa'i mu'o
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