[lojban-beginners] Re: sevzi kosta

[turnip <turnip@bcpl.net>]

>===== Original Message From "Vid Sintef" <picos.picos@gmail.com> =====
>On 8/22/07, turnip <turnip@bcpl.net> wrote:
>>   I guess what I'm trying to say here is a)  "sevzi" refers to what
>> something/someone thinks of as "self" -- "Ah, that's who I am".  b) You are
>> trying to assign some sort of characteristic of belonging to somebody as
being
>> a characteristic of the coat by putting it in the tanru (and you should
>> proably be using "se ponse/selpo'e" rather than "sevzi" in any case).  You
can
>> have a tordu costa (short coat), a xunre costa (red coat), but what does it
>> really mean to have a "possessed coat"?  c)  The mechanism of "ne/pe/le da
de"
>> already exists.  Why try to reinvent the wheel?
>
>The dichotomy between "the possessor" & "the possessed" (also "I" &
>"others") and its substantiation may be a habitual, natural notion to
>Westerners; however, there are more kinds of reality of human
>consciousness associated with language in this world. I'll take as an
>example this Japanese expression which is very much common among the
>speakers:
>
>Jibun-no fuku-o arau.
>
>This literally means:
>
>self-kind-of clothes-[object] wash.
>le sevzi taxfu cu se lumci
>
>Grammatically, "jibun" does not indicate any possessive relationship
>between the speaker and the clothes. It rather identifies the object
>as a part of "a self". The word "jibun" can actually refer to either
>"I" or "you" or anything which is an agentive existence. "Jibun-ga
>iku" can mean either "I go" or "You go" or "The-cat-over-there goes",
>depending on the context.

  Fine.  lojban has the same with "da".  "da klama".  And if you want to say a
coat that's associated with someone, then  "le da kosta".  But it seems to
meas if you want to have it both ways.  Your original idea in your sentence
was to say that the woman wanted _her_ coat, that is, as opposed to someone
else's.  If so, then "le ri kosta", "le ny kosta", or even "le zo'e kosta"
etc.  works fine.  If you don't care (or let the reader assume), then le kosta
works fine.  It's not that it can't be worded in lojban, it's that you don't
liek the way it's worded.


>
>Of course, there is another version which has a component equivalent
>to the English possessive case "my" or "your" etc.:
>
>Watashi-no fuku-o arau.
>(my clothes-[object] wash.)
>
>Anata-no fuku-o arau.
>(your clothes-[object] wash.)
>
>"jibun" is often used when addressing to many individuals or making a
>generalized statement. "jibun-no fuku" would be a set of clothes which
>one can identify as a part of his/her/its self. Notice also that the
>subject is elided in each expression, the practice of which is again
>quite common in Japanese (and, unlike Spanish or Polish, there is no
>such a system in which verbs or adjectives suggest the case of the
>elided subject).
>
>Inter-subjective consciousness, which has socio-culturally been
>prevalent among many parts of Asia, would be the keyword for this
>convention in Japanese. Lojban, while having acquired the notion of
>"default tense" inspired by Chinese, seems to have left some other
>important aspects of human language unexamined.
>
>
>             --vid