der Mouse wrote:
That is, can I talk about how "John running through the store makes a mess for me to clean up?"What you want to refer to is _the event of_ John running through the store.le nu la djan. bajra klama fo le zarci cu rinka zo'e poi se lumci mi[the event (John run-go with-route the store)] cause (something such-that is-cleaned by-me)le nu la djan. bajra klama fo le zarci cu mukti le nu mi lumci ri[the event (John run-go with-route the store)] motivate [the event (I clean it)]la djan. bajra veka'a le zarci .isemu'ibo mi lumci ri (John run via-route the store) and-as-a-motivational-effect (I clean it)Thinking about these, I find myself uncomfortable with them. In the latter two, what does "ri" refer to? The store, if I've got the rules right - but that isn't quite right, because it's lost the link (implemented with "mess" in the original) indicating that le te lumci is directly caused by John's running through the store. As far as I can see, either of the last two could equally well apply to "John's running through the store prompted me to clean it [but perhaps not because John's actions made it any worse - maybe John would have walked instead if the store had been satisfactorily clean already]".
As far as I remember, anaphoric pro-sumti count each sumti individually and do not group sumti contained within "nu" or other abstraction cmavo, since these are also selbri, and could thus be referred to with "go'i" etc. "ri" has to refer to the first complete sumti encountered when reading leftwards, which in this case is "le zarci".
You're right that the last two leave it up to the reader to guess that John's running creates dirt/mess, but I don't see that this is any more problematic than using "zo'e". If you really want to make it explicit that John causes a mess, then you need to say something like "dertu" (or whatever it is that John causes that requires cleaning up).
I think I see a problem with the first one too. It looks to me as though it's saying that John's running caused le se lumci, not le te lumci. Shouldn't this end in something like "rinka zo'e poi te lumci fi mi"? Or perhaps "rinka zo'e poi mi lumci fi ke'a"? Or even just "rinka le te lumci be fi mi"? Or have I just managed to get myself confuzzled again?
Sorry, I didn't check the place structure of "lumci" and assumed it was "x1 cleanses x2 from x3," whereas it's "x1 cleanses x2 of x3," so yes, it should be "te". I'm not sure if "rinka le te lumci be fi mi" is possible because of the nature of "rinka" (John can pysically cause the mess, but not my cleaning of it), but it would work with "mukti".
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