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Re: [lojban] [oz] Abstractors



la .asiz. cu cusku di'e
It depends on what exactly you are trying to say. From your description,
maybe _focus_ is what you want
   "It was my trying to open the door (instead of trying to do something
else) that killed him."

Yes, that sort of thing.

I would go with
   {lo nu mi troci lo ka kargau lo vorme kei kau cu rinka lo nu ko'a morsi},
as I find {kau} after non-question words just perfect for this kind of
thing.

That's not bad, apart from having to mention the sumti first in order to attach {kau}. {lo nu troci lo kau se troci be mi} is still so much more verbose, but it's also explicitly stating the situation unlike English, so it's a bit unfair.

I think what the English does is actually {lo jai se troci} again. We know that {jai} can be elided in English.

   lo jai se troci cu rinka lo nu morsi
   "That which I tried [to bring about] caused him to die."

Which is at least comparably succint and about as precise as the original English.

Some would argue that {ba'e} is the correct choice, but I think emphasis
is a whole different thing, just confused with focus because of our
myopic reading of prosody. But that is a whole different story...

Actually, I very strongly agree with you that {kau} is right and that {ba'e} is something entirely different. Usually, I use bare {kau} in {du'u}-abstractions, however. I think some people are of the opinion that {kau} is wrong outside of {du'u} and {ka}, but I don't really agree (after all I use {ma kau} at top-level).

mi'e la selpa'i mu'o

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