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Re: [lojban] Request for grammar clarifications
la rab spir cusku di'e
I think that part of the reason {me} was changed is because {du} is, for
some
reason, taboo.
Probably true.
I know it's not good to throw {du} around carelessly, but
sometimes it would be the best way to say something.
Yes. Probably the main one to avoid is {du lo broda}, which is
logically sound but means about the same as plain {broda}.
But with {du}'s status in
the language now, it would get more use as a lerfu shift or yet another
word
for "ten" or something
Actually, I wanted it at some point as a replacement for {du'u},
which is too long for the amount of use it gets.
- out of fear of being unlojbanic, nobody uses {du}.
So, it seems that {me} was changed to incorporate some uses of {du}.
It should be noted that they are different though in one important
respect: {me ko'a} means "x1 is at least one of ko'a", whereas
{du ko'a} means "x1 is equal to (each) ko'a". When ko'a is a
singleton they are about the same, when it isn't, they aren't.
In other words, {me ko'a} is more or less {du su'o ko'a}.
An example that comes to mind is way back from aulun's poem, {morji loi
critu}.
The poem ended with, IIRC,
le morsi mlatu
me mi
{cu me mi}, I suppose.
This is different from {mi morsi mlatu}, which would seem to be the most
Lojbanically correct way of saying that you are a dead cat, because the
sentence referred to a dead cat mentioned earlier in the poem.
Right. {me} is the only way to incorporate the definiteness of {le}
into the selbri.
Perhaps a better example would be the Walt Kelly quote, "We have met the
enemy,
and he is us." Is there any better way to translate that than {mi'o puzi
penmi
le bradi .ije ri du mi'o}?
That's strictly equivalent to: {mi'o le bradi puzi penmi gi'e du}
co'o mi'e xorxes
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