Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: [lojban-beginners] Non-logical AND in Tanru?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 14:09:18 -0700

On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 11:04:49 EST, [email-masked] wrote:

>Some minor points: {finpe je mirli} is a single selbri, as far as the grammar 
>is concerned, and {mi e do} is a single sumti.

Here's where I think it's easy to confuse the text that represents a
concept and the concept itself. "mi e do" as text doesn't refer to a
single thing that is an argument of a predicate relation, although it
may be used in the same place as text that does. In the grammar we call
the structures that are used to specify sumti "sumti", even though the
structures themselves are not sumti. Sumti are the things that are
arguments to predicate relations, referred to by text. Similarly, the
selbri is not the text used to specify the selbri, and a bridi isn't the
text used to express the bridi.

"mi e do" in "mi e do klama" doesn't refer to a sumti, it's a
grammatical construction that's shorthand for another grammatical
construction, namely "mi klama. ije do klama". There's the text, the
meaning of that text, and the grammatical rules and word definitions
that get you from one to the other. It's a problem that there's not
much vocabulary to distinguish grammatical constructions from what they
refer to. "le mlatu" isn't a sumti; it refers to sumti. Just like the
word "dog" is a noun but a dog is not a noun.

Of course, I may be the only one trying to use "sumti" to refer to the
things referred to by the text and it's entirely my fault. But how else
would one say that in "mi klama do" the relationship of "klama" is being
claimed between the referents of "mi" and "do", if not with "'mi' and
'do' are sumti of 'klama'" or "It claims, 'I go to you'"? Excluding, of
course, saying "'mi klama do' means 'mi klama do'". So in English how
does one distinguish between the grammatical category of "sumti" and the
things referred to by the same?

-- 
EWC