Re: [lojban-beginners] Abstraction terminators: kei and ku

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Saturday 16 October 2010 16:51:04 Zifre wrote:
> coi rodo
>
> I have been studying Lojban for about two months now.
>
> Lojban for Beginners says that "kei" is the terminator for
> abstractions. So naturally I would guess that
>
> lonu mrobi'o kei xlali
>
> would be
>
> <lo{nu mrobi'o kei}> xlali
>
> However, jbofi'e wants me to add a "ku" after the "kei", but only if
> the next word is a brivla, e.g.
>
> lonu mrobi'o kei pu xlali
>
> parses how I would expect (and the same if what follows is a sumti). I
> understand that you would probably just use "cu", but what is the
> logic behind this (putting events into a tanru)? What would the
> original example mean ("a dying type-of bad thing")? Has this type of
> construct ever been used in real Lojban?

"nu mrobi'o kei" is a selbri. So is "xlali". Two selbri together form a tanru, 
which is also a selbri. But "pu" cannot be applied to a tertau, only to a 
whole selbri, so "nu mrobi'o kei pu xlali" is not a selbri. The sentence with 
all its terminators and separators is ".i lo nu mrobi'o vau kei ku cu pu 
xlali vau". (jbofi'e -ie)

Yes it does mean "a dying type-of bad thing".

Pierre
-- 
lo ponse be lo mruli po'o cu ga'ezga roda lo ka dinko

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