On Sun, Jun 3, 2012 at 8:37 AM, tijlan
<jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:
On 3 June 2012 10:50, Jonathan Jones <
eyeonus@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not a question of whether it would make sense. It can't be done. FAhA cmavo grammatically can not be converted. I would assume for the same reason the PU can not be converted, as both are tenses.
to have special syntax for FAhA etc. separately from BAI. It seems to
unnecessarily complicate the grammar.
FAhA, PU... these are all units of tag. If the grammar needs to
explicitly forbid certain tags such as "se fa'a" for the lack of a
corresponding sumti place (which is a better justification than "for
they are 'tenses'"), it should also forbid the likes of "te fa'e" and
"ve di'o" for the same reason ("fa'e" has no x3, and "di'o" has no
x4). And we may wish to have in the grammar neither avoidable
inconsistency nor unnecessary complication.
Except that's not true. fa'e, being the BAI form of fatne, /does/ have an x3. And and x4, an x5, ... , and an xN. All selbri have an infinite amount of places, all past me'ixa are undefined. As such, any form of a selbri, such as an encapsulated sumti (i.e. lo broda) or modal (i.e. fi'o broda) also has all the places the selbri has.
BAI add a place to the selbri, creating a new predicate. Tense words do
not. This is why they have different grammar- they fulfill different roles.
"fa'e" = "fi'o fatne"
"fa'a" != "fi'o farna"
Many do-nots in Lojban are already based upon semantics, upon whether
it wouldn't make sense. I don't use "ve di'o", because it doesn't make
sense, even though grammatical; I wouldn't use "se fa'a", because it
wouldn't make sense, even if grammatical.
This is not one of those cases. It is not the "semantics" that determines this "do-not", it is the grammar.