And in answer to your question Alan, yes, there are other constructs where {cu} "pulls you out". For example, the example that I gave earlier: {lu lo gerku cu batci cu se cusku mi}. The first {cu} says "here's the selbri of this bridi (the one inside the quote)". Then the second {cu} says "here's the selbri of the next outer bridi (the one for which this quote is the first sumti)". This example has the second {cu} standing in place of {li'u}.
On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 12:27 PM, .alyn.post.
<alyn.post@lodockikumazvati.org> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 12:19:53PM -0400, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> On Thursday 28 April 2011 11:59:55 Luke Bergen wrote:
> > But in {lo lo blabi cu gerku} it seems like it's not behaving the same way.
> > It seems like it's not valid to read this as "take the next selbri and
> > make it a sumti: (take the next selbri and make it a sumti: (blabi) <here
> > comes a selbri> (gerku) )
>
> "lo blabi cu gerku" is a sentence in which "lo blabi" is a sumti of "gerku".
> But the first "lo" expects a selbri, not a whole bridi, so "lo lo blabi cu
> gerku" is ungrammatical.
>
> Pierre
Perhaps the best informal rule then is that one reads Lojban
left-to-right, and the preceding text has an expectation about
what will come next.
So while you can understand the probable intent of {lo lo blabi
cu gerku}, the expectation of the left-most {lo} exceeds the
expectation of the {cu}: you can't just read "pull up" on the cu
and expect the rest of the structure of the bridi to make sense,
you have to instead look for what you expect based on where you
are in the setence.
-Alan
--
.i ma'a lo bradi ku penmi gi'e du
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