Re: bridi place structure with unusual tertau

[Richard Curnow <richard@rrbcurnow.freeuk.com>]

On Fri, 28 May 1999, Jorge J. Llambías wrote:

> From: "=?US-ASCII?Q?Jorge_J._Llamb=EDas?=" <jorge@intermedia.com.ar>
> 
> You didn't ask what this one means:
> 
> (6) ko'a ko'e broda be ko'i 
> 
> My guess is that ko'i is still broda2. If I'm right that would 
> mean that linked sumti are not just at the start of the tail_terms.

Indeed, the case of >1 sumti before the selbri illustrates this, as you
show.

After reconsidering the issue, I think you have to consider linked sumti
on the tertau as fixing some of the places, in effect producing a new
selbri which has fewer places (somewhat like the function of zi'o).

> But I don't know whether that makes ko'e broda3 or a
> superposition of broda2. This can happen sometimes:
> {ko'a broda fa ko'e fa ko'i}. 

There's something in chapter 9 of the reference grammar, which indicates
that the sumti without a FA cmavo before them fit into the so-far unused
places.  So I think it would have to be broda3 by that argument.

> 
> My answer is that I don't know, and that it's not a good
> idea to use linked sumti with the tertau anyway.

Yes, it certainly appears to be a bad idea!  Although see my point above,
that they could be viewed as fixing certain places.  Of course, nothing is
gained over writing those places in the head or tail terms anyway, so it's
pretty pointless.

My main interest in getting to the bottom of this is that the BNF
definition of the language allows it, so there needs to be an unambiguous
treatment of what it means (I'm putting together some software and this is
one of the bits I'm implementing at the moment.)

Just to make things even more complicated, what about the following cases?
I've used A, B, ... to represent sumti this time, and marked what I think
the place assignments are underneath.

A B ke broda be C ke'e be D be'o E
1 4             2         3      5

A fo B ke broda be C ke'e be D be'o E
1    4             2         3      5

A B ke broda be C ke'e be fo D be'o E
1 3             2            4      5

A B ke broda ke fi C ke'e be D be'o E
1 4                3         2      5

If that was bad, I'm starting to wonder what happens if there is
conversion present as well.  e.g. things like

A fo B te ke se broda be C ke'e be D be'o E

start to look awfully complex.  I think I'll just let my program give up
with something like this!

co'o mi'e ritcyd.

-- 
Richard P. Curnow
Stevenage, England