Re: [lojban] Re: Confused about Abstractions

[Jacob Errington <nictytan@gmail.com>]

On 6 December 2013 21:23, <wolf.finster@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you for your answers. Though now I wonder, why repeatedly embedding bridi into each other does not give the same semantic result as tanru or relative clauses do. 

Why would something like 'lo lo lo gerku ku barda ku bunre ku batci ' not mean '[[[something is a dog] is big] is brown] bites'?

It doesn't mean that. It means "a brown thing [related-to a big thing [related-to a dog]]", which pretty much nonsense in a neutral context. The embedded sumti in cases like {lo ko'a broda} is equivalent to {lo broda pe ko'a}; this construct serves to restrict the referent scope of the main sumti, i.e. {lo broda} in this case. You seem to think that the inner sumti is used to construct a relative cause, but relative clauses are constructed with the words "poi" and "noi" (and "voi", for those who use it.) Unless you use one of those two (three) words, then you are not constructing a relative clause in Lojban.

Now, it turns out that some tanru are very semantically close to a similar construction involving a relative clause. This turns out to parallel English (among other languages).

e.g. the brown dog <-> the dog which is brown
---- lo bunre gerku <-> lo gerku noi bunre

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o

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