[lojban-beginners] Re: Questions re: proper translation/syntax

["Theodore Reed" <ted.reed@gmail.com>]

On 11/28/06, Gene Mosley <lojban@mosleyfamily.org> wrote:

Hello again.

Please help me out with the following.
=====
[do ca tavla]
you present-time talk
- or -
now you're talking

or is there a better way to express this sentiment?
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This one is more complicated.
In a mini-lesson on lojban.org it says that:

[da tavla ta] = someone talks to that person

[do tavla zo'e mi] = you are talking about me

[zo'e tavla mi do] = someone talks to me about you

So, does [da tavla mi] = [zo'e tavla mi]??

Are they both = someone talks to me??

Both [da] amd [zo'e] were used for "someone".

I thought [zo'e] was like a place holder for sumti
that were not important.

In this case, they are functionally the same. The difference is that in "da tavla da", someone is talking to himself. da (like de and di) is a variable. In any given scope, multiple instances of da will refer to the same thing, where with zo'e, the multiple zo'e can (but need not) refer to different things. In the simple case of the examples, they both functionally mean "someone".

-- 
Theodore Reed (treed/bancus)
www.surreality.us