[lojban-beginners] Re: Dots and spaces (was: Logical connectives)

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 6/18/07, Vid Sintef <picos.picos@gmail.com> wrote:
> I tend to separate "le" from others in a phrase like "le mi cukta" so that
> the fact that "mi" modifies "cukta" and "le" is the descriptor of "mi cukta"
> as a whole is clearer: { le | mi cukta } rather than { lemi | cukta }.

I don't like {lemi} either, but it may be misleading to think of {mi}
as modifying {cukta}. In fact {le mi cukta} = {le pe mi cukta}
= {le cukta pe mi}, and {mi} is a kind of infix that really modifies
the whole {le cukta}.

If you consider {le mi xunre cukta}, {mi} does not function as just
another tanru component, so that it modifies {xunre} and the result
modifies {cukta}. Rather {mi} modifies {le xunre cukta}.

{lemi} is not as bad as {lenu} though, which can actually be misleading.
Writing {lenu} is like writing {lecukta}. It distorts the true syntactic
relation between {le} and what follows. {lexunre cukta} would give the
totally false impression that {le} is more closely attached to {xunre}
than {xunre} to {cukta}, and similarly {lenu klama kei cumki} seems
to suggest that {le} is more closely attached to {nu klama kei} than
{nu klama kei} is to {cumki}. It is not uncommon to forget that {kei}
terminates just {nu}, not {lenu}.

> I prefer ".iseri'abo" to ".i se ri'a bo" since it's semantically a specific
> version of ".i", altogether mediating two sentences rather than separately
> being within and constituting one sentence: { mi pu gunka | .iseri'abo | mi
> ca tatpi } rather than { mi pu gunka | .i | se ri'a bo mi ca tatpi }.

Yes, {.iseri'abo} does make more sense. It can also be used to
distinguish it from {.i seri'aku} which has more or less the opposite
meaning.

mu'o mi'e xorxes