[lojban] Re: Can you read this and tell me if it is correct?

["Brett Williams" <mungojelly@gmail.com>]

On 9/11/08, arpgme <lojban-out@lojban.org> wrote:

What I DON'T understand is how "my desire" translates into "le se djica be mi". Why is "se" there? I thought "se" was used to switch positions between two words? Can I just write "le djica be mi"? If not, what would "le djica be mi" mean?

There are two tricky things in Lojban that are actually the same tricky thing!  One of them is that if you say: 

  mi do prami 

That means I, you, love, I love you, and if you say 

  mi prami do 

That means I, love, you, I love you.. you can say "prami", the selbri, after any of the sumti.  But what if you say: 

  prami do 

That one can be a little tricky.  That means "someone unspecified loves you", it puts the "do" into the x2 spot of "prami".  But "do" is the first sumti in the sentence, so why doesn't it go in x1?  Because there's this special quality of the first sumti, before the selbri, what's sometimes called the "head".  This is one manifestation of that quality, is that if you say the selbri first in the sentence it's assumed that you've elided the x1 spot (though you can still get to it by saying "fa"). 

Another way that the head gets severed from the tail in bridi is when you are making a sumti using an article, like "le".  The head that's chopped off is also what's referred to by the sumti.  So if you have the bridi "prami do", there's an unspecified someone in the x1 who's doing the loving.  When we make a sumti out of it with "le", we get: "le prami be do".  The chopped off x1 is who we're referring to, so the sumti refers to a lover.  By using "be" to reattach the "do", we make it a lover of you.  So "le prami be do" refers to someone that loves you. 
 
So as you know "se" switches around the x1 and x2, so these two are the same: 

  mi prami do    --    do se prami mi 

You can also drop the head from a "se" switched sentence:

  se prami mi 

Someone unspecified is loved by me.  Now we can make up a sumti that refers to that missing head: 

  le se prami be mi 

"be" is confusing, because it's just structural.  The thing is we've got two different levels of bridi going at the same time!  That's why we need to distinguish.  For instance: 

  le se prami be mi citka 
    - My beloved eats. 
  vs 
  le se prami mi citka 
    - The beloved eats me! 

Both the "citka" bridi, and the second "se prami" bridi that we've tucked away inside the "le", are hungry for something to fill their x2 slot.  If you just say "mi", then the main bridi "citka" gets to eat it, leading to the second (hopefully) absurd result.  In order to put the "mi" into the x2 slot of the inside bridi, we say "be" in order to get access to it. 

I think it might be helpful to go through a few examples.  

  mi klama le zarci 
  I go to the market. 

  klama le zarci 
  Someone unspecified goes to the market. 

  le klama be le zarci 
  The goer to the market, the market-goer. 

  le klama be le zarci be'o xagji 
  The market-goer is hungry. 

Here I've used "be'o", which is a terminator for "be", to introduce it, but you could just as well use "cu". 

  mi citka lo plise poi kukte
  I eat an apple which is delicious. 

  citka lo plise poi kukte 
  Someone unspecified eats an apple which is delicious. 

  le citka be lo plise poi kukte 
  The eater of the apple which is delicious. 

  le citka be lo plise poi kukte be'o klama 
  The eater of the apple which is delicious is going. 

How about if there's more than one trailing sumti?  More than one can be linked in with "bei": 

   la .boston. se klama mi fu lo karce 
   Boston is travelled to by me in a car. 

   se klama mi fu lo karce 
   Somewhere is travelled to by me in a car. 

   le se klama be mi bei fu lo karce 
   Somewhere that I go in a car. 

   le se klama be mi bei fu lo karce pu melbi 
   Where I went in a car was beautiful. 

I terminated the "be" phrase there with a tense before a selbri (which terminates any incompleted sumti in the open bridi), but you could as well terminate it with "cu" or with "be'o". 
 
I'm not sure if that's really enough to explain "be" and gadri from a full stop, but hopefully someone out there found that slightly clarifying. :) 
 
mu'o mi'e se ckiku