Re: [lojban] Re: Translating preposition

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Thursday, March 22, 2012 19:03:04 Sid wrote:
> I dunno; it's just kinda weird to use the word to describe non-Lojban
> stuff. I do think that sumtcita are like adpositions, just think it's
> better to make a new word for the general language concept.

There is a place for language-specific grammatical terms (e.g. "nif`al, 
hitpa`el, etc." are Hebrew verb forms resembling voices, and make some sense 
in other Semitic languages, but no sense out of Afro-Asiatic). This is not one 
of them. Members of BAI, and tense markers when not directly before the 
selbri, act just like prepositions except that the complement can be dropped 
(as in the notice on jbovlaste "ca farvi gau"), so they are prepositions. (I'm 
looking at the Wikipedia article, which lists four criteria. The third is 
vacuous in Lojban.)

I think that even brivla and cmevla can be called verbs and nouns, so one can 
say "Most common nouns are expressed as verbs in Lojban". Verbs have 
arguments, just as brivla have sumti. I wouldn't call a sumti a noun phrase, 
as usually it doesn't contain a noun; it's either a determiner phrase, or a 
pronoun, or some other things like a quoted phrase.

On Thursday, March 22, 2012 20:21:35 Jacob Errington wrote:
> Would it be bad to call an adposition, even from another language, a cmavo?

No. "cmavo" has a fourth place for the language. I could say "zoi gy. and .gy. 
mintu zoi .gy. or .gy. enai zoi .gy. if .gy. lo ka ce'u cmavo makau fo lo 
glico".

Pierre
-- 
ve ka'a ro klaji la .romas. se jmaji

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.