I first pondered this idea when I noticed that many of us say {.i mi na djica lo nu broda}, when really we mean to say {.i mi djica lo nu na broda}. Let's suppose I have a child whom I want to be in good health, etc., as I should. Then, if that child is playing some dangerous game in which he or she might fall, then I should say {.i mi djica lo nu do na farlu}, as I do indeed desire something, namely that they not fall. Saying that I "don't want them to fall" isn't really accurate. I don't want them to fall, sure, but what *do* I want? I want them to not fall. I would find myself led to say {.i mi na djica ...} in Lojban due to this malglico influence, but I think that we should do our best to avoid it.--
Rather than speak in negations like this on top level, it would be more accurate to move the negation into the abstraction. But that's not easy since it goes against our natural language bias. Let's compromise.
-nar- rafsi {na}
Let's semi-systematically define lujvo using this rafsi as follows.
narbo'e -> brode FA lo su'u naku zo'u ...
Therefore, {nardji lo nu do farlu} means {.i mi djica lo nu naku do farlu}, which is more accurately representative of my actual desires than to say {.i mi na djica lo nu do farlu}.
I have noticed that some lojbanists use {to'e} or perhaps another NAhE for this purpose. I think that this usage is overall inconsistent with the main uses of NAhE, since these cnavo are intended to modify the semantics of the following selbri. {to'e djica} in that sense doesn't make any sense at all, as what is the polar opposite of desire is rather elusive to me. Repulsion? Okay, perhaps {to'e djica} is fine then. But it requires in some sense that the listener and the speaker agree on the scales at hand. Therefore the NAhE solution works only provided such an agreement, whereas the -nar- solution functions independently of those semantic agreements.
The -nar- scheme can be applied to other brivla as well giving us interesting results.
e.g. {.i mi narju'o lo du'u lo mamta cu te vecnu lo cidja} "I know that mom didn't buy food."
In the event that the selbri on the right of -nar- contains no abstractions, then we assume to obvious interpretation of -nar- which is to negate only the selbri, otherwise done by performing a bridi-final negation.
e.g. {.i mi nardu'a lo plise do} -> {.i mi dunda lo plise do naku}.
All in all, I think that this is a very powerful tool, not to mention that it allows is to modify the internal semantics of an abstraction from the outside, which is generally not possible.
.i mi'e la tsani mu'o
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