Re: di'e preti zo nu

[Robin Turner <robin@bilkent.edu.tr>]

la xorxes cusku di'e

> >> Had I used {le plise}, the meaning necessarily would have been that
> >> each child ate the same apple (or apples, but each child eats them all).
> >>
> >I don't think {le} demands this, though it may suggest it.
>
> It demands it. It maps directly to what would be in logical notation
> something like:
>
>         For every x which is one of the three children, and for every y
> which
>         is one of the apples, x eats y.
>

Does it say this in the formal grammar?  After all, {le} is not necessarily
singular.

> I never said {lei} wasn't useful. In {mi se batci lei ci gerku} I may or may
> not receive three bites, is that what you mean? The difference is more
> striking in examples like:
>
>             le ci gerku cu grake li munoki'o
>             lei ci gerku cu grake li munoki'o
>
> which clearly have to refer to different situations. All I meant was that
> if you had to choose one single article and drop all others then it should
> be {lei} which is in my opinion the most basic.

I misunderstood you - I thought you were saying that if you were going to drop
any article, it would be {lei}.  Actually I only think articles are of much use
in identifying something as a sumti rather than a selbri - if this weren't vital
in order to parse a lojban sentence, I wouldn't bother with articles at all.  As
my Turkish wife says, "artikeller gereksiz" (unnecessary).

co'o mi'e robin.