[lojban-beginners] Re: pu'i?

["Adam D. Lopresto" <adam@pubcrawler.org>]

On Thu, 28 Dec 2006, Cortesi wrote:

> Something strange to me in the gismu list around line 952,
> 
> > pu'i  pus          can and has                               modal aspect:
> > can and has; demonstrated potential...
> 
> and just a few lines later,
> 
> > punji puj     pu'i put     x1 (agent) puts/places/sets x2 on/at
> > surface/locus x3  ...
> 
> Is that not contradictory uses of pu'i? How can it be both a rafsi and a
> cmavo?

This is a FAQ:

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Frequently+Asked+Questions+About+Lojban#T3

Quoting from it:

[[[
Isn't it confusing that some rafsi are identical to cmavo?

No, it isn't. In theory you can tell completely from the neighboring
syllables whether something is a rafsi. This is how the computer is able to
parse Lojban without understanding its meaning. For example the dei in
bavlamdei ("tomorrow") is a rafsi for "day," not the cmavodei, a special
pronoun meaning "this sentence." We know which is which because Lojban words
can't end in a consonant, so deimust be a part of bavlamdei; "bavLAM" can't
be a whole word. (No, it can't be a name, either. Names end with a consonant
followed by a pause, written as a ".") In practice you can also use your
knowledge of the meanings of the words to help with this; it is possible to
think up a sentence like

la bavLAM. dei cusku,

"Bavlam says this sentence.", but it is not likely in practice if you don't
know anyone named "Bavlam"! 
]]]
-- 
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

"Do you have a lighter?"
"Why?"
"I need to see if this is gasoline."
	--Charlie Hinderliter