From kingcats@xxxxxxxxx.xxxx Thu Jan 7 08:12:14 1999 X-Digest-Num: 39 Message-ID: <44114.39.135.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Thu, 07 Jan 1999 09:12:14 -0700 From: Robert Rapplean > la lojban se prami mi > "Lojban is loved by me" > > Perfectly grammatical and understandable, but I don't see why you need the > passive here. I would only put "la lojban" in the first place if Lojban had > already been established as the topic, or if I were comparing it with some other > language (e.g. I love _Lojban_, not Esperanto). However, I may be transferring > my attitudes towards the English passive to Lojban, which of course we're not > supposed to do! I'm not sure that that is out of place. The expressed purpose for re-arranging the sumti is to allow the user to state that, in this case, Lojban being loved is more significant than me loving it. While I'm not sure that "passive" is an appropriate description, it does put the stress on the acted-upon instead of the acting. I'm that this isn't appropriate for non verb-like gismu, though. co'o rab.