Re: gasnu

["Jorge Llambias" <jjllambias@hotmail.com>]

la pycyn cusku di'e

>  x1 (action/event/state) motivates/is a motive/incentive for
>  action/event x2, per volition of x3
>
>  I'm not quite sure what the third place is meant to be, though.>>
>
>I suppose that the1>3 conversion of mukti would do nicely for the original 
>sentence then

I think it doesn't help, because x3 is the agent of event x2,
not of event x1:

x1: John laughs
x2: Robin hits John
x3: Robin

A more clear wording for {mukti} might be "x1 motivates
x3 to do x2". I think the "per volition of x3" roundabout
was used to keep the arguments in Lojban order.

>  <<Sumti-raising is less the first line of defence than a dirty hack
>  to get out of the problem!>>
>Not really.  It is a regular feature of the grammars of all the languages I 
>know (not a huge list, to be sure, but fairly diverse).  Lojban's only
>peculiarity is that it marks the feature explicitly rather than by
>implication -- either lexically or by paradox -- and that change is 
>required
>by the claim to be a logical language.

Is there any way of telling when sumti raising should be
marked and when it isn't necessary? For example:

(1)     la djan mukti le nu la robin darxi dy
         John motivates Robin to hit him.

(2)     le nu la djan mi'afra cu mukti le nu la robin darxi dy
         John's laughter motivates Robin to hit him.

(3)     le nu le nu la djan mi'afra cu fanza cu mukti
         le nu la robin darxi dy
         John's laughter being annoying motivates
         Robin to hit him.

I find that (2) is more specific than (1), John laughing
is just one little part of John, that part which is most
responsible for motivating Robin's action.
But so is (3) with respect to (2). It is not everything
about the laughter that motivates Robin, it is the
specific property of it being annoying.
If (1) requires {tu'a}, does (2) require it too? And if
it does, then so does (3), because we could always
narrow the motive down even more.
How can we determine whether John, his laughter,
or the annoying character of his laughter are
being unmarkedly (and so incorrectly) raised or not?

co'o mi'e xorxes