Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: Intro and Questions

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 11:21:32 EDT

In a message dated 5/8/00 6:39:41 PM CST, [email-masked] writes:

<< Subj: Re: [lojban] RE: Intro and Questions
Date: 5/8/00 6:39:41 PM CST
From: [email-masked] (Jorge Llambias)
To: [email-masked]

la pycyn cusku di'e

>Not exactly my problem. {zo zo'u} is a well-formed sumti. For some
>well-formed sumti, S -- all the LE and LA ones at least, and I think some
>others -- you can form a new sumti by prefixing LE+X.

That happens to be true, I think, but it is a strange way to
put it. It is not even the most general case. To prefix a LE
to a sumti what you need is that it have an explicit outer
quantifier. Is that what you mean by X?

>What is the condition
>on X that allows this? At a guess, it has to be that X+ S is itself a
>well-formed sumti and it is strictly this to which the LE is prefixed.

If by X you mean a quantifier, that is correct. If you mean
something like {do}, then no, it doesn't work.
{le do ci le gerku} is a well formed sumti, but
{do ci le gerku} is not.>>
So X has to be a quantifier -- but LE may be LE+ sumti, apparently.

<< >So
>the fact that LE absorbs {do} and {vi} into new LE is irrelevant except 
>that
>LE S alone is not a sumti.

To say that LE absorbs {do} is at least suspect. And I don't
see how you can say that it absorbs {vi}. In {le vi broda}
if anything {vi} is absorbed by {broda}, it is part of the
selbri that makes up the sumti-tail. For example, if you want
to add an internal quantifier it will be {le ci vi broda},
not what you'd expect if {vi} was absorbed by {le}.

I know that in Loglan {vi} and {do} are taken to be part of
the article (modifiers of the article?) but in Lojban this
is not at all the case, unless you take a very superficial
view. If you look at all the structures it just doesn't work.>>
You might think that, after all the times I have learned this language, I 
would think first of the contamination from the last language (but one, 
typically) when I get into a problem. In this case, I admit that I was aided 
by finding the missing piece so useful: Suppose I have {le so nanmu} and then 
{ci le so nanmu vu sanli ije ci le so nanmu va sanli} and then I want to talk 
about the first group: I can't griceanly say 
{le ci le so nanmu}, nor can I use {le vi nanmu}, since breaks the connection 
with the original group. {levi ci le so nanmu} would be just what I want. 
On the other hand, I does appear that LE still absorbs {do} -- indeed Sumti 
generally (some exceptions?) -- LE+ Sumti can go anywhere LE can go except in 
front of another sumti in front of yet another sumti or sumti tail -- not a 
good way to put it in YACC terms, admittedly.