Questions

[Dylan Thurston <dpt@MATH.HARVARD.EDU>]

Greetings!

I've been trying to learn lojban in my spare time (which is rather
sparse, so it's been going slowly).  I decided to try to learn by
reading a text, and picked the "I Have a Dream" speech translated by
Nick Nicholas since I'm a big fan of the original.  But after getting
through the first few lines, I've come across what seem to me to be
two errors.

>From the text:
>.i mi fi do ca cusku doi pendo fe ledu'u mi mu'inai loi cazi li'i nandu joi
                                                         ^^^^
>se steba cu ca'o pacna da .i da mutce se jicmu le'e merko se pacna

"cazi" is a tense indicator, "now" "short time distance".  I don't
know what it would mean, though.  The English has "the difficulties of
<today and tomorrow>" around here.  The structure of the whole tale
end of that birdi eludes me.

>.i mi pacna lenu levi natmi baco'a virnu gi'e tarti tu'a le fatci smuni be
                                                             ^^^^^^^^^^^
>leri kriselsku po'u <<lu mi xusra ledu'u ledi'e jetnu si'unai se jimpe .itu'e
>ro remna cu jikydunli co'a lenu ri se zbasu li'u>>

I believe "fatci smuni" is a translation of "true reason".  But
"fatci" seems like a poor translation of this use of "true"; "fatci"
seems closer to the English word "correct".  Wouldn't something like
"jicmu smuni" be better?

Because of these two and what strikes me as an overabundance of tanru,
I'd guess that Nick wrote this while he was still experimenting with
his lojban style.  Is this right?  Is there a better text for a
beginner to start with?

I also generated a couple of other questions reading the various
materials, mostly the reference grammar.  The most perplexing one to
me relates to tanru.  From the textbook (lesson01, line 2157):

>Specifically, the first place of "blanu" (the only place in this case)
>in some way restricts the relation, so that "blanu botpi" does not
>just refer to any kind of bottle, contents, and material, but to a
>combination of these that in some way involves something exhibiting
>the color blue.

I'm not sure exactly what this means.  The reference grammar doesn't
make this point explicitly, but it does appear that you can adjoin
places other than the first to the seltanru.  I'm particularly
confused by the examples a little farther down in the textbook,
listing possibilities for {botpi tanxu}:

>- the box is bottle-shaped, making ta1 both a bottle and a box;
>- the box contains one or more bottles;
>- the box is made of one or more bottles;
>- the box is the contents of one or more bottles;
>- the box is the material used for making one or more bottles.

The 4th and 5th examples here perplex me; they violate the only
meaning I could give to the earlier quote.  Anybody?

-------------------

Another question:

>From the "Diagrammed Summary of Lojban Grammar", line 1619:
>This construct may be combined with the modal construct discussed just
>previously to identify a sumti:
>
>      la djan. ne pu la mark. [ge'u] [cu] melbi tavla [vau]
>      -------- <  >. --------       |     ===========
>     John, who was (incidentally) before Mark, is a beautiful-talker.

Doesn't this show exactly the confusion about {pu} mentioned earlier?
{la mark.} is not an event.

mi ckire do ro danfu

.i fe'omi'e dilyn. trsTON.

(Speaking of which... why don't multi-word cmene introduce ambiguities in
the phonetics?)