[lojban-beginners] Re: association (pe/be)

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 4/10/06, Andrew Heathwaite <gtrpkt@yahoo.com> wrote:
> This brings me to my main question, which is, can we use 'be' the
> same way to show an explicit association using the place structure of
> the main brivla?  For example:
>
> le be mi zdani
> the of me home
> my home
>
> Is this grammatical?

No, it's not.

There is an important syntactic difference between {be} and {pe}:

{be} attaches a sumti to a brivla: {<brivla> be <sumti>}, filling an
argument place of the brivla. The resulting construction is a more
complex brivla, so it can for example be converted into a sumti
with {le}, like other brivla. But it can also be used in other places that
a brivla can be used, for example as part of a tanru.
{<brivla> be <sumti>} is the only grammatical order for this
construction.

{pe} attaches a sumti to another sumti <sumti> pe <sumti>.
For simple one-word sumti, the {pe <sumti>} can only follow.
For sumti of the form {le broda ku} there are three places where
the {pe <sumti>} can be attached:

le (pe <sumti>) broda ku
le broda (pe <sumti>) ku
le broda ku (pe <sumti>)

but in all cases you need a full sumti where you can attach
the {pe <sumti>}.

> If not, does that mean that whenever we want to
> say "my home", we have to say "le zdani be mi" and there's no way to
> switch them around?

You can say {le mi zdani}, which is equivalent to {le zdani pe mi}.
This may be the house where you live (the most likely interpretation),
but it may also be any other house associated with you, depending
on the context (maybe a house that you built). You can also say
{le pe fe mi zdani}, strangely enough.

mu'o mi'e xorxes