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Re: [lojban] Re: Well I guess you do learn something new every day...

At 02:38 PM 8/3/01 +0000, Adam Raizen wrote:

At any rate, as noted in the article, there's another way to do both
of these. "le nei", "le se nei", etc. will work for the current bridi
interpretation, and "le no'a", "le se no'a", etc. is basically
equivalent to the main bridi interpretation of the "vo'a" series. The
question is, in a sentence like "broda le nu brode le nu no'a", does
the "no'a" refer to the brode-ing or the broda-ing? I really can't
come up with a good reason why it would refer to the bridi exactly one
level up and not the main bridi.
Imagine sentences nested multiple levels deep. You can use vo'a to refer quickly back to the main level, which seemed to occur often enough that it was worth chewing up 5 cmavo in a series for (and it may have existed back in JCB's version). You can use le nei for the current bridi (but ri/ra usually is good enough), but need a SE to get non-first places, and you can use le no'a, possibly with subscripts, to get anywhere in between the current bridi and the main bridi (and with a negative subscript, possibly also to refer inwards from the main bridi, though there is no usage and counting convention defined for same). Thus we cover all the possibilities with only 7 "new" cmavo, spending most of them for the possibility that is useful but for which we had no other way to do it (because if you are very nested, you may not know how many levels out to subscript no'a - umm, I guess no'axiro would work but ...) 


        mi pensi le nu le nu no'a cu rinka le nu mi djuno

Is it my thinking (likely) or being the cause (???) that makes me
know.
The sentence claims that it is the "thinking about the thinking about", that is the cause. 


        mi badri le nu do djuno le du'u no'a

Does it mean that I'm sad that you know that I'm sad, or that you know
that you know (that you know, etc.)
It means that I'm sad about the fact that you know I'm sad (about the fact that you know I'm sad ...) 

lojbab
--
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org