Re: [lojban-beginners] Possesions and a Few Other Questions

["David Gowers (kampu)" <00ai99@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Taylor Skidmore <balt11t@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm relatively new to Lojban, and so I just wanted to make sure something's
> right:
> {le zdani be mi be'o blanu}
> My house is blue. Right?
Yes, but I'll clarify that {be} has nothing to do with possession.
{le zdani be mi be'o blanu}  states that 'the house which I live in,
is blue', not that 'the house which is mine, is blue'
(even though, often a house which is yours is one you live in or vice versa)

If you want to specify 'the X of mine', the full form is like
{le zdani pe mi}, and there is a short form where the first thing
after the is the possessor as in {le mi zdani}
-- both of those expressions mean exactly the same thing -- 'my
house', in the loose sense generally meant by english, 'the-house
associated-with me'.

(there are other possessive relations, such as po -- {le birka po do}
-- your arm is specific to you (physical/legal possession), and po'e)

> {le kumfa be ti be'o smaji }
> This room is quite, right?
no, there is no selbri there, you are saying '[the (room in this
structure)-ish silent-thing]'. If you don't understand why, I
recommend reading up on tanru.

You may mean
{ti poi kumfa ku'o smaji}
This-which-is-a-room is-silent (this room is emitting no/minute sound)

However, that is not very Lojbanic .. rather, it is somewhat English in style.
An experienced Lojbanist would probably say simply

{le kumfa ku smaji}

'a/some specific room is-silent'

(which room is silent is something taken from context, but usually
would be the immediate room ('this' room))

> Like I said, I'm pretty new to Lojban, so any help would be greatly
> appreciated.
> Also, can someone clarify the true difference between la/lo/le? And what

la X  -- the thing which I refer to by the name X.
        equivalent to {la'e zo X} -- for example, my lojban name is
'kampu', you would probably refer to me as {la kampu}, which amounts
to 'that-which-I-refer-to-by-the-name 'kampu''

le X  -- some specific X described. If I am talking about a dog which
keeps trying to jump on me, I might say {le gerku ku troci lo nu plipe
mi} -- some specific dog(s) attempt some general event(s) of jumping
onto me.
           'the thing(s) that I describe, as-far-as-I-know-truthfully, as X'

lo X -- some general X.
          .. whereas {lo gerku ku troci lo nu plipe mi}
          might be taken as a general complaint that dogs in general
try to jump on me (I am not thinking of specific dog(s), hence I use
'lo gerku')
          Somewhat implies greater literal truthfulness than le; see below

The classic lo/le comparison, from CLL, is

le ninmu cu nanmu

The woman is-a-man

{le ninmu} may appear to be a woman. {lo ninmu} actually IS a woman.
This is in accordance with the specific/general distinction -- le is
more 'that which we understand to be X' because when you refer to
something specific, correct identification of what you are referring
to is much more important than describing it in a completely accurate
way; when you refer to general things, it is more important to be
accurate.


> does {cu} really mean?

It means that the main selbri of the current bridi immediately follows ;)
But don't worry about it too much. Learning individual terminators
like 'ku' is much more useful for a newbie than understanding 'cu',
and once you understand a few terminators well, and general sentence
structure well, the meaning of 'cu' will be easy to grasp.

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