Subject: Re: [lojban] lo with discourse-scope?

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 15:54:25 -0500

On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 01:17:16PM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > I base this on the use of {bi'u pa nanmu...} in "bradi je bandu" to
> > mean "There's a man..."
> 
> Just {pa nanmu} means "there's a man".

Of course it means that literally. But in English we say "There's a..."
or "Once there was a..." when introducing something new.

> {bi'u pa nanmu} if sentence-initial means the whole sentence is new info.
> Otherwise, it's the word before
> bi'u that gives new info. I would interpret the new information in {pa bi'u 
> nanmu cu broda} as the statement that the cardinality of {lo'i nanmu gi'e
> broda} is 1.

Does it mean that? Shouldn't it be "at least 1"? I'm fairly sure that
saying {pa nanmu cu broda} does not exclude the possibility that {lo
drata nanmu cu broda}.

You have a point with the focus of {bi'u}. Then the right way would be {lo
bi'u nanmu}, and to be specific {lo bi'u pa nanmu}. Then again, marking
the whole sentence as new info would have about the same effect, so
there you end up with {bi'u pa nanmu}. I'm not sure if this is why Arnt
used that in the poem; {bi'u pa nanmu} also fits the rhythm better than
anything else.

--
la rab.spir
noi bi'unai sarji zo gumri