[lojban-beginners] Re: ganai do djica lo nu terpa gi ko terpa

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 1/17/06, Yanis Batura <ybatura@mail.ru> wrote:
> {ganai do djica lo nu terpa gi ko terpa}
>
> A literal translation of this IRC topic into English is: "If you want
> to fear, then fear".
>
> But if we will go little further, we will discover that this sentence
> means: "Make the statement 'If you want events of fear, then you fear'
> true". And I think this one is not exactly what a malglicean
> translation means.
>
> Am I wrong?

I would separate this into (at least) two issues.

(1) {do djica lo nu terpa}

Can that be used for "you want to fear", even though it could also
eventually mean "you want to scare someone", "you want someone
else to fear", "you want someone else to scare someone", etc.?
I think the answer here is that the most common interpretation
for {ko'a djica lo nu broda} is indeed {ko'a djica lo nu ko'a broda}.
The same goes for words like kakne/troci/snada/fliba/sisti/zukte
and others, where the agent of the event in x2 is assumed to be the
same as the x1. I don't know if I would call this malglico. You can
always repeat the sumti, {do djica lo nu do terpa}, for maximum
clarity, but not repeating it is very common.

(2) Scope of {ko}.

Is {ganai X gi ko Y} to be understood as "If X is true then make
Y true", or is it "make 'if X then Y' true"?

In other words, is {ganai do djica gi ko terpa} equivalent to
{ganai ko djica gi do terpa} for example?

I don't think this has ever been satisfactorily settled.

mu'o mi'e xorxes