Re: [lojban] Roleplaying in Cantr

[tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>]

On 4 July 2010 01:21, Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:

On Sat, Jul 03, 2010 at 09:33:40PM +0100, tijlan wrote:
> On 3 July 2010 20:23, Timo Paulssen
> <timonator@perpetuum-immobile.de> wrote:
>
> > On 07/03/2010 07:02 PM, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> > > In Lojban, though, you'd do:
> > >
> > >   .i do mo sei mi cisma
> > >
> > > which does not have that problem.
> > >
> > Honestly I always thought it'd be
> >
> >  .i do mo sei cisma
> >
> > which I find most elegant.
> >
>
> But is it clear enough? My gut feeling is that {cisma} likes {do}
> as its x1. It could mean "What's up, you're smiling."

I'd take it as "mi", since that's who's talking.  But I've never
been good with sei.

I use {sei} to bring in a bridi that I would otherwise put in a {gi'e} or {ije} construct. For example, I might like reordering

 ko'a tatpi gi'e za'o dansu
 She is tired and keeps dancing.

into

 sei tatpi ko'a za'o dansu
 Tired, she keeps dancing.

But of course the official grammar does not formally restrict this {tatpi}'s x1 to the main bridi's x1 namely {ko'a}. And I think it's rightly so, because I also find it useful to be able to say

 sei cizra ko'a za'o dansu

in lieu of

 ko'a za'o dansu .ije cizra

, where {cizra}'s x1 is not necessarily {ko'a} itself.

If I wanted to more detach {tatpi} from the rest of the sentence -- at least perceptually -- so as to allow more intuitional possibilities for its x1 in addition to {ko'a}, I might use {to}:

 to tatpi toi ko'a za'o dansu
 (Tired) She keeps dancing.

I tend to feel the x1 of this more visually/sonically bracketed {tatpi} being more up in the air than that of the one in {sei ...} with its terminator ellided, thus potentially meaning "She is tired", "I'm tired", and so on, depending on the context beyond this very sentence.

If the discursive element comes from a rather simpler emotion/attitude of the speaker themselves as in "How are you? (I smile.)", I might opt for just attitudinals like {zo'o} or {ui}. The same goes for "(I'm tired,) She keeps dancing", for which I might just say {a'enai ko'a za'o dansu}.

-tijlan

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