[lojban] FAhA & BAI

[tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>]

On 3 June 2012 16:08, Jonathan Jones <eyeonus@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Any xN whose role is undefined has no discrete existence in the
semantics of the selbri. We can't tell an undefined x3 from an
undefined x4 or x100, so nothing qualifies as *fatne's x3* unless we
actually put it into words. My computer allows me to create a 2012th
folder on my Desktop, and that doesn't mean my Desktop already has a
2012th folder. The syntactic extensibility is there to allow for the
arbitrary addition of a new sumti place, not to spontaneously generate
an infinite amount of it.

After all, "has no x3" isn't a deviant description of a selbri for
which the dictionary has defined no x3:

"The place structure of "rinka'' does not have a place for the agent"
(CLL12.16.13)
"I was surprised that {misno} doesn't have an x3 place, but that's
ok." (xorxes, 10 Oct 1993)
"{ka} doesn't have an x2." (And, 8 Aug 2001)
"Because blanu has no x2?" (Robin, 15 Mar 2007)


> 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"

The conventional grammar says
[NAhE] [SE] BAI [NAI]
and
[NAhE] FAhA [NAI]
not because FAhA don't add a place but because they don't have x2-5
that can be marked by SE.

FAhA apparently do add a place. {mi dansu fa'a do} would mean "I dance
facing you" by virtue of {do} participating in the relationship
denoted by {dansu}. {fa'a} contributes to the meaning of the predicate
as much as BAI do. The interpretation of {mi dansu fa'a do bai do}
would hinge as much upon {fa'a do} as upon {bai do}. "Facing you"
would impart as much information about the event of me dancing as
"compelled by you" would. In {lo dansu be fa'a bei bai}, the two tags
are parallel in their function of adding a place to the selbri.

According to jbovlaste, {fa'a} is {fi'o farna}, {pa'o} is {fi'o se
pagre}, and so on.

"Tense" is a problematic term. I wouldn't say all BAI are non-tense
words. {fa'e}, {di'o} etc. seem as tense-ish as {to'o}, {bu'u} etc.
(conversely, the latter seem as modal-ish as the former).


>> 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.

And my point is that we could merge and simplify the grammar of FAhA
into that of BAI since we wouldn't use SE where it wouldn't make sense
anyway, i.e. where there's no x2-5 to bring forward.


mu'o

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