On Friday, September 21, 2012 3:23:21 PM UTC-6, tsani wrote:
{.i .u'u doi la daiv .i .e'anai ku'i mi na curmi le nu do go'i}
For this purpose you should use {lo} (using {le} here offers no benifits really. There're almost no practical cases where {le nu} is ever needed.)
{.e'a} (and by extension {.e'anai}) is what we call an "irrealis attitudinal". What that means is that it basically describes a non-real world. {.e'anai do go'i} by *itself* means "I'm not letting you do that," whereas {.e'anai mi na curmi lo nu do go'i} means "I'm not allowing it to not be the case that I allow you to do that," which sounds approximately as semantically wrong in English as it does in Lojban :p.
Thanks for explaining all this. I was the least certain of this one in particular (and "ko xabju" but I didn't see a closer word for "abide", but I think the ambiguity is part of the fun of that movie).
I take it either of these alternatives would be closer then:
- .u'u doi la .dev. .ie'anai go'i
- .u'u doi la .dev. .i ku'i mi na curmi lo nu do go'i
Is that true?
Yes, those are much better :)
However, although I think it was unintentional, {.ie'anai} is meant to be {.i .e'anai}, yes? Otherwise, {.ie'anai} is not valid.
Also, there is an important distinction to make between the various types of negation that exist. What you use in the second alternative is called contradictory negation; it makes to claim, simply denying a claim. A better alternative would be to use polar opposite negation, in the form of {.i ku'i mi to'e curmi lo nu do go'i}. We can form a lujvo to shorten this to {.i mi tolcru lo nu do go'i}.
Finally, {go'i} only really works if there is a preceding sentence to which {go'i} can refer. If Dave doesn't say anything, then that {go'i} is weird. Using {co'e} would be better in this context, I think.
Otherwise the pictures are pretty good. The "style" is a bit weird, but that's simply due to being new.
Hopefully that will improve as I read more.
And spend time on IRC, I hope! :)