On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 03:25:13PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> Robin Lee Powell scripsit:
>
> > Those of you without time/ability to read the Lojban might might the
> > topic interesting: xorxes was pointing out four places where I used
> > a COI cmavo as though it was UI (i.e., without following it with a
> > name). xorxes expressed his desire for COI cmavo to actually
> > grammatically be like UI cmavo (which I'm inclined to agree with).
>
> Well, UI binds to the previous word. Is that what you were doing?
> It's certainly grammatical to have COI by itself now, although you
> need an explicit "do'u" if the next thing is a name or sumti.
As cowan says, you need a do'u.
This is neccesary because otherwise you wouldn't be able to say
things like the (extreemly frequent on irc) "coi rodo". An alternative
in the design could have been to add a cmavo in the cases where you
want to give a COI an argument; so you would say "coi be rodo" or
something and the default would be argumentless. Personally I favor
the way it was done, because the most common COI (namely "coi")
usually is said with an argument.
It's worth the trouble it causes, which is only caused because none
of us (even those of us who like to claim to be in the top 5 ;) )
are speaking above perhaps toddler level---certainly nowhere near
fluency. And 99.99% of us misuse fundamental language features
(namely gadri---perhaps xorxes might have a consistent (though
incorrect by the book) usage; I don't understand it, so I decided
not to say 100% to be on the safe side). So things like coi+do'u
and BY+BOI are easy to not have internalized.
--
Jordan DeLong - fracture@allusion.net
lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u
sei la mark. tuen. cusku
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