Re: [lojban-beginners] A question on how causals in Lojban work in a sentence

[Ilmen <ilmen.pokebip@gmail.com>]

On 27/06/2016 04:34, ozone.blob@gmail.com wrote:

Recently I've been looking at some Lojbanic sentences or constructions or whatever, and came upon one in which I'm not sure how a causal relationship works, or of the role of "ri'a".

It is as follows:

ca lo nu mi klama lo zdani vau do pinxe lo tcati ri'a lo nu do taske

There are three bridi within this: 'mi klama lo zdani', 'do pinxe lo ladru' and 'do taske'; 'I go home', 'you drink milk' and 'you are thirsty' respectively.

I understand that ca at the beginning indicates that the relation/action described in the first bridi occurs before that in the second, and that ri'a indicaates a causal relationship with some aspect of the words that precede it being as a result of the final bridi, however I'm unsure exactly what that is, is it that one of the things happens before the other or does the causal relationship involve only thefinal two bridi with the first one added just for additional information as to when it happened?

Just wondering if anyone could clear that up for me, thanks.

Owen

On 27/06/2016 13:55, ozone.blob@gmail.com wrote:

Also "ca" here should be "pu".

[pu lo nu mi klama lo zdani vau] do pinxe lo tcati [ri'a lo nu do taske]

In this Lojban sentence, the main bridi is {do pinxe lo tcati} (= "You drink tea"), and the sentence contains also two adverbial phrases, the one that begin with  {pu} ("before"), and the one that begin with {ri'a} ("caused by").
In Lojban, adverbials and quantifiers have a rightward logical scope, so they apply to the bridi they are in, as well as any other adverbial or quantifier appearing on their *right*, but they are under the logical scope of any adverbial or quantifier appearing on their *left*. Therefore, the relative order of appearance of adverbials matters when interpreting a Lojban sentence containing more than one of those.

In this case, the temporal information {pu lo nu mi klama lo zdani vau} (= "before I go home") comes first, so it applies to everything on its right, including the causal information {ri'a lo nu do taske} (= "because you are/were thirsty"). The causal information only applies to the main bridi {do pinxe lo tcati}, and it is under the scope of "before I go home".

The whole sentence translates as "Before I go/went home, [you drank tea because you were thirsty]", or "[your drinking tea caused by thirst] occurred before I go/went home".

The importance of the relative order of appearance of adverbials is more obvious in the following examples:

• {ki'u lo nu carvi ku  na ku  mi klama lo panka} = "Because of rain, I don't go to the park."
• {na ku  ki'u lo nu carvi ku  mi klama lo panka} = "It is not the case that I go to the park because of rain." (So maybe I go to the park for another reason.)

• {mi na ka'e lafti lo tanxe} = "I can't lift the box", "It is not the case that I can lift the box".
• {mi ka'e na lafti lo tanxe} = "It is possible that I do/did/will not lift the box", "maybe I do/did/will not lift the box".

I hope this helped.

—Ilmen.

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