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Re: [lojban] RE: Grammar Clarifications
At 03:31 PM 05/30/2001 -0400, pycyn@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 5/30/2001 9:44:33 AM Central Daylight Time,
jcowan@reutershealth.com writes:
Essentially that there was no way of representing what
"me" means now, whereas what "me" used to mean is just
"steci be" = "pertains to".
Yes, this is what I thought I recalled. Except that {steci be} does not do
justice to the first use JCB gave to it (though it surely passed through this
in the traditional JCB path from light to miasma): The first two uses were
{ti me la Kraislr karce} (translating to Lojban, I hope) and {la loglan se
kevna lo me zo me} "There is a me-shaped hole in Loglan" (JCB inevitably
thought this the cleverest use of "me," and it does have a charm).
The latter seems to be an avoidance of using "la'e", which is what we would
normally think of when referring to
words and their application to things or,
and I'm not sure what the distinction you are trying for in the following
alternative:
rather, the things they were applied to, not about the referents of the
expressions that followed the {me}.
But I think that "steci be [sumti]" would have worked for both of those
examples.
ti steci be la kraislr karce
la loglyn se kevna lo steci be zo me
The phenomenon intended is common enough
to deserve a cheap means (and {me} now seems virtually useless, given {du}
and other ordinary features).
The primary use of "me", as with several other words, is the conversion
from a sumti to a selbri, whenever we have a reason to do so and don't want
to figure a more elegant way of doing it (if one is possible). "du"
doesn't accomplish that exactly - it equates two or more sumti. "me"
causes one to think of "being a [sumti] as itself a predication.
--
lojbab lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org