Re: [lojban] Possession/transfer/exchange predicates

2014-06-09 2:07 GMT+04:00 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:

If we search for "pedantically" in the official gismu list, we find 15 hits, corresponding to the notes on these words:

canja/cerda/cirko/cnemu/dirba/dunda/friti/jdima/jerna/jinga/kargu/pleji/prali/vamji/vecnu

The comment is basically the same for all of them: "pedantically, for objects/commodities, this is sumti-raising from ownership of the object/commodity". This comment comes after saying that the argument place in question can be an object, commodity, event or property, so it's hard to say what the punctilious follower of the gismu list is supposed to do with these words. Are they allowed to take objects or not?

If we search for "sumti-raising" we get those 15 plus xajmi and djica.

In fact this is not really about raising in the linguistics sense of the term, so I won't be talking about sumti-raising. The question is whether argument places like these can take objects and/or events and/or properties.

There are other words that involve possession/transfer/exchange but for which the gismu list doesn't say anything explicitly about "sumti-raising", for example: claxu/pindi/ricfu/punji/sabji/jmina/dejni/jarco/lebna/cpacu/jbera/cuxna/vimcu/cpedu/mipri/sisku/sarji/cupra/dirce/ferti/xaksu/tisna/daspo/ralte

In the case of ricfu and pindi, for example, the list explicitly gives permission to use goods or properties in x2, without any "pedantically" warning. "claxu" on the other hand says nothing about the type of thing that can be lacked. It's hard to say whether this was done on purpose or it was just an oversight.

I don't know whether in real-life Lojban there are people who eschew "mi dunda lo plise do" in favor of "mi dunda lo ka ponse lo plise kei do", "mi dunda tu'a lo plise do" or "mi posydu'a lo plise do".

Let's cosinder these examples of "dunda":

(1) mi dunda lo plise do
(2) mi dunda lo nu mi gunka kei do
(3) mi dunda lo nu do gleki kei do

(4) mi dunda lo ka ce'u ponse lo plise kei do

(5) mi dunda lo ka ce'u gunka kei do
(6) mi dunda lo ka ce'u gleki kei do

I contend that (1) is unequivocally correct Lojban, and that the "pedantically" notes should be removed from the gismu list. I contend that (2) and (3) are also perfectly fine, x1 being responsible for the event and x3 being the beneficiary. I don't see any problems with (4). The question here is, is (4) correct because the property is transferred from x1 to x3, or is it correct because x1 is responsible for x3 acquiring the property? I think the latter is correct, which also justifies (6), and it also means that (5) is not correct in the sense of (2), since (5) should means that I give work to you, not that I giive my labor to you. The definition thus has to be clear about whose property we are talking about when a place takes a property (the gismu list mentios properties but doesn't say whose property it is).

It's a non-problem for me to correct {dunda}. The main obstacle for me is that there might be much more than those 15 brivla that would allow "object" => "property" change. In my version of gimste all those places are marked as "located" and ... in fact the majority of places are "located" throughout the gimste.

I believe that that's basically how all of these possession/transfer/exchange predicates should work. Except for the basic ponse/ckaji split, which clearly distinguish possession of objects from possession of properties, all the other predicates can happily mix them up, and having two parallel lists for the ones and the others would be too costly.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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