[lojban-beginners] Re: Nouns and verbs (was: learning lojban)

["Turniansky, Michael" <MICHAEL.A.TURNIANSKY@saic.com>]

>Whee, you've turned a "noun" into a "verb".

>How is that different from turning a "verb" into a "noun" by adding
{le}?

  Ah, but it isn't.  That's one of my points.  But to CALL a brivla an
inherent "verb" is a mistake, IMHO.  All brivla can be "turned into" a
particular traditional part of speech by how it's used (which may
involve adding cmavo before it).  For example, to say "le gerku mlatu",
mlatu isn't a verb, but throw in the "cu" before it, and it is.  So is
"le mlatu" "nouning" the verb or is "cu mlatu" "verbing" the noun???
The fact that "cu" is often elidable doesn't make it any less of a
marker of part of speech of the following brivla than "le" or "me" is.
 

>> commons nouns (which are brivla, when used as such).

> Combinations of gadri + brivla, I'd say.

  See above -- "le gerku mlatu" doesn't make gerku into a noun (it makes
it na adjective), but rather makes mlatu into one.  But one COULD view
gadri as  articles (indeed, jbovlaste specifically refers to them as
such), so are you suggesting that "the automobile" in English is a noun,
but "automobile" is not?    "le mlatu" is a noun phrase, not a noun.
Brivla are not traditional parts of speech, but can function as n,v,adj,
or adv. 

                   --gejyspa 

-----Original Message-----
From: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org
[mailto:lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org] On Behalf Of Newton, Philip
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 8:59 AM
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Nouns and verbs (was: learning lojban)

la gejyspa cu cusku di'e
> Verbs are action or state-of-being words.

And {mlatu} is something like state-of-being-a-cat.

> "le mlatu" is the subject of the sentence,

*nod*

> therefore mlatu is functioning as a noun, not a verb, in that
sentence.

I'd probably have agreed with you if you'd said that {le mlatu} is
functioning as a noun. But not {mlatu} by itself.

>   And while it is true that you cannot say lai galtu cu .alp. 
>  You CAN say "lai galtu cu me la .alp"

Whee, you've turned a "noun" into a "verb".

How is that different from turning a "verb" into a "noun" by adding
{le}?

> commons nouns (which are brivla, when used as such).

Combinations of gadri + brivla, I'd say.

mu'o mi'e .filip.