Adjectival participles.
Lojban does not have them, but let's look at the known options for translating phrases such as "to be a young ex-president" and "to be an abandoned house". What these have in common is that they contain two tanru units, at least one of which wants to be preceded by a tense/aspect/modal. This is not grammatically possible, because tense/aspect/modal tags apply to entire selbri and not to tanru units, and they cannot appear in the middle of a tanru. The following work-arounds are known to be available:
1) BE: {citno jatna be ba'o ku}, {se cliva be ba'o ku zdadi'u}
2) POI'I: {citno poi'i [ke'a] ba'o jatna kei}, {poi'i [ke'a] ba'o se cliva kei zdadi'u}
3) ZEI: {citno ba'o-zei-jatna}, {ba'o-zei-selcliva zdadi'u}
4) lujvo, but this only works with a few tags
5) GU'E (and possibly {ke}): {gu'e citno gi ba'o jatna} (not allowed), {gu'e ba'o se cliva gi zdadi'u} (allowed)
6) ME LO: {citno me lo ba'o jatna}, {me lo ba'o se cliva poi [ke'a] zdadi'u} / {me lo ba'o se cliva me'u zdadi'u}
Option 1 is ugly to me because of the change in word order and the {ku}.
Option 2 is very flexible and very verbose and very complex (it increases the nesting by one level)
Option 3 is not practical when the tanru unit consists of more than one brivla (e.g. {se jai broda} or {na'e se broda}) as {zei} would then have to be placed between all the words.
Option 4 is not at all general.
Option 5 has potential but requires forethought, and {gu'e} also can claims too much, since it merges all the places, not just the x1 (just like {je}).
Option 6 needlessly involves a sumti, which seems backwards to me, because I believe that predicates should be the base case and sumti should be derived from them, and not vice versa.
If tag + tanru_unit yielded a tanru_unit instead of a selbri, then {(citno (ba'o jatna))} would be a valid tanru, as would {(ba'o se cliva (zdadi'u))}. However, this would require a lot more {cu} everywhere, specifically anywhere TAG was used in place of {cu} to close all the preceding constructs.
I am looking for practical solutions to this rather commonly encountered problem.
~~~mi'e la solpa'i
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