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[lojban-beginners] Re: New lojbanist asking about "po'e" and "lo"
On Apr 22, 2007, at 5:37 PM, Rob Hughes wrote:
Dear Lojbanists,
I recently started learning Lojban, and I just joined the Lojban
beginners' list. I'm working through Robin Turner and Nick Nicholas's
_Lojban for Beginners_. May I ask a couple of questions about Lojban
grammar?
First, I'm puzzled about the relationship between "po'e" and "po". I
understand that "po'e" can be used for unique inalienable possession.
My hands are only mine and can't stop being mine, so I say "lo xance
po'e mi". Is "po'e" used for inalienable possession that isn't
unique? My father can't stop being my father, but he's also my
sister's father. Can I say "lo patfu po'e mi", or should I say "lo
patfu pe me" (or "lo mi patfu")?
After reading from The Complete Lojban Language chapter 8, section 3
& 7 to brush up...
Quickly, any of these might be true in some circumstances, but {be}
is the better way to do it.
Saying {lo mi patfu} is the same as {lo patfu pe mi}. All three of
{pe} {po} and {po'e} are true if you are an only child. The loosest
is {pe}, which means that the father is in some way related to you --
he could be your biological father, which is most likely, but any
association is good enough.
Saying {po} or {po'e} asserts that he is "specific to you". The
association that he has with you, he has only with you. If you're
saying he's associated with you by being your biological father, then
you must be the only person/thing that he's the biological father of.
Using {po'e} goes even further to say that that association can't be
broken. The example often given for unbreakable (inalienable)
association is {my hand}. Even if it's cut off, it's still mine.
The more correct way to say {my father} would be {lo patfu be mi}.
The structure of {patfu} is {x1 is a father of x2; x1 begets/sires/
acts paternal towards x2; [not necessarily biological] }. We can make
a sentence about my father: {ti patfu mi} = {this-person is-the-
father-to me}. The second place is {mi}, which we want to keep in our
noun (sumti) form. So we use {be}. The cmavo {be} is used for
something called an internal argument (internal sumti). This
basically lets us stick things inside {patfu}.
From a different view, using {le} or {lo} means 'the thing that
fills the x1 of the following'. So {lo patfu} is the thing that can
be described as {ti patfu}. And {lo patfu be mi} can be described as
{ti patfu mi}.
Lojban for Beginners has more about this in Chapter 9. http://
www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/lessons/less9.html
Second, I saw some posts on the lojban.org front page suggesting that
the meaning of "lo" has changed. Is _Lojban for Beginners_ up to
date? If not, is there a summary of the change that a beginner would
understand?
Thanks,
Rob Hughes
I'm not quite sure on this, but I don't think that Lojban for
Beginners is up to date with xorlo (the new definition for le and
lo). You should look at the page on the Lojban wiki about it:
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=How%20to%20use%20xorlo
mu'o mi'e .aleks.