Re: [lojban] Re: hardly

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

la aulun cusku di'e

> > I have been using {ja'aru'e} for this, and {naru'e} for "almost".
>
> I never could much appreciate the need/help of {ru'e}, as an
> attitudinal-emotional, in compounds with a bridi affirmer or
> negation.

I don't think {ru'e} should be confused with an emotion.
It attenuates the meaning of the preceding word, just as
{sai} intensifies it. It can be used with emotions but also
with other words.

> .i smaji ga'u ro cmana
> .i ne'i ro ricycpana
> caku seltirna
> fa ji'ino nunva'u
> .i lei ricyne'i cmacipni
> puzaku de'a grisa'a
> .i doido'u ko denpa le li'i
> ji'a do bazi sipna .i ba'a

Very nice! Do you really mean {li'i ji'a} or {do ji'a}?

> I tried to use {ji'ino} here (although referring to {no}, it doesn't
> seem to be "almost nothing" rather than something like +/- zero
> i.e. also covering negative values which isn't appropriate for normal
> speech).

I think it works well. Negative values are excluded because they
don't make sense as quantifiers.

> Will still have to think about it. Quantifiers can go with sumti (I
> hardly can see a house/I can see almost no house. I can hardly see/I
> can see next to nothing); but what's with selbri? (I could hardly
> sleep -> I had almost no sleep;  this trick isn't always at hand).

There could be lots and lots of things that I can hardly see,
so "hardly see" is not the same as "see hardly anything".
We have different ways of doing the quantifier "hardly any",
but I think we have to use {ru'e} to say that the bridi
barely holds.

mu'o mi'e xorxes





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