Subject: Re: mine, thine, hisn, hern, itsn ourn, yourn and theirn (was[lojban] si'o)

From: Nick Nicholas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2001 15:19:38 -0700

cu'u la xorxes
>You didn't complain when I used:

> ta cimoi lei nanmu le ka clani
> That's the third of the men in height.

>How do you use the x3 of moi?

As a {se porsi}, rather than a {te ckini}. Which is why you can accept the
above sentence, where the mean are being ordered by height, without
accepting {memimoi} as meaning "mine".

I mean, honestly, if you ignore the gismu list's definition of {moi},
"*ordered* by rule x3", then there is in principle no reason why you can't
use any 3-place gismu for any other. And xorxes, I know you don't care
about the gismu baseline. But I since I do, I cannot accept this.

My beef isn't that you're using sumti as ordinals --- though I think it a
barbarism. My beef is that, if you advocate {memimoi} as a generic
expression for "mine", you must dispense with any notion of ordering,
because "yours" vs. "mine" in general doesn't have a sense of ordering (as
in fact you have.) I mean, when the Duchess takes Alice's hand, and she
takes {le me la alis. moi}, {me la alis moi befi ma poi se porsi?}

Like I say, if you use {zu'i pe mi}, you'll be understood immediately, you
won't leave metaphysical questions dangling, and you can go about your
business actually telling a story.

Unless, of course, you want to use Lojban not in the most clear way, but in
the most exotic way (for reasons of personal creativity, or Sapir-Whorf, or
whatever.) Which I'm fast realising many here do...

Btw, there are two quite substantial chunks of Lojban in my 'retractions
Part 2' message. Yet to see anyone even respond to them, let alone comment
on their usage... (Does that mean my usage doesn't decide anything? :-)

>i mi xenru le nu do ba'o gleki i ku'i lo'e nu ze'e gleki na cumki
>i to u'i ko mi fraxu le nu mi logji jimpe le du'u makau smuni
>zo ba'o toi

.i mi ji'a xenru .u'i lenu do na tinbe zu'i pe le gencukta lenu do jimpe zo
ba'o poi sumti tcita...

Nick Nicholas, TLG, UCI, USA. [email-masked] www.opoudjis.net
"Most Byzantine historians felt they knew enough to use the optatives
correctly; some of them were right." --- Harry Turtledove.