[lojban-beginners] Re: Quantities and articles

["Antonio Soriano" <antonio.soriano@gmail.com>]

A while back someone suggested this link:

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=How+to+use+xorlo


It contains, as I understand it, some recent changes in lojban. Although a few more examples would be good...

mi'e antonios.

On 8/3/06, Pupeno <pupeno@pupeno.com> wrote:

Hello,
I am studying lojban, I only started seriously about a week ago. Now I reached
the section on numbers and article and I am struggling[1] to solve the
exercises on these pages Excercise 3:
http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/lessons/less4quantities.html
The answers are on
http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/lessons/less4answers.html

For example, point 2 asks to translate:
"The pack of three cats bite the dog",
which I translated as
{lu'o le ci mlatu cu batcy le gerku}, but checking the answers it proposes
{lei ci mlatu cu batci le gerku} or
{lu'o ci le mlatu cu batci le gerku}
If I translate back that sentence it'd be
"three of the cats bite the dog"
It goes on to say: "If you have {lu'o le ci mlatu cu batci le gerku}, you're
implying that the three cats are the only three cats you have in mind,
whereas {lu'o ci le mlatu} leaves it open that there are other cats around."
If in English I said "the [pack of] three cats ..." am I not speaking of three
cats I have in mind, otherwise I would have said "a [pack of] three
cats ...". Am I wrong.
In conclution, I would say:
"The pack of three cats bite the dog"={lu'o le ci mlatu cu batcy le gerku}
"A pack of three cats bite the dog"={lu'o ci le mlatu cu batcy le gerku}
"Some pack of three cats bite the dog"={lu'o ci lo mlatu cu batcy le gerku}
(last added to improve confusion ;); in fact, the last two seem very much
alike in English and the first two seem very much alike in Lojban.
Where am I wrong ?
Thank you.
--
Pupeno <pupeno@pupeno.com> (http://pupeno.com)

[1] So far I've got some exercises wrong, but I was doing good.