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Re: 'nai' and .UI and ambiguity



de'i li 5:2 vecu'u le notci
neme'e la'o xy. <94981535401@out.newmail.net> xy.
la'o xy. Adam Raizen xy. pu ciska di'e la jbomriste :
On Sat, 5 Feb 2000, Adam Raizen wrote:

> From: "Adam Raizen" <araizen@newmail.net>
> 
> Since 'nai' has more uses than just within an indicator phrase, 
> allowing it anywhere would cause ambiguity, since in some cases 
> we wouldn't know whether it's negating an unspecified .UI or serving 
> some other role.
> 
> Speaking of which, how are we to interpret the pattern
> 
>       broda je ge'e nai brode
> 
> Does the 'nai' polarly negate the indicator, or does it pick up after 
> the indicator ends and contradictorily negate brode? The parser 
> doesn't answer this by fiat, since it doesn't seem to analyze within 
> the "je ge'e nai" phrase.

I think the nai binds as closely as possible, in this case to the UI
indicator.  If you need to force the end of a UI so that nai binds to the
thing the UI qualifies, you can stick "y" after the UI, e.g

broda je ge'e y nai brode

I don't know whether this is the 'official' solution though!

Cheers
Richard

-- 
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Richard P. Curnow                                       rpc@myself.com
Weston-super-Mare       Network time sync for Linux/Solaris/Dial-up at
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