From Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Sat Jun 03 09:39:01 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 3448 invoked from network); 3 Jun 2000 16:39:00 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 3 Jun 2000 16:39:00 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO qg.egroups.com) (10.1.2.27) by mta1 with SMTP; 3 Jun 2000 16:39:00 -0000 Received: (qmail 17794 invoked from network); 3 Jun 2000 16:39:00 -0000 Received: from cj.egroups.com (10.1.2.82) by iqg.egroups.com with SMTP; 3 Jun 2000 16:39:00 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Received: from [10.1.10.110] by cj.egroups.com with NNFMP; 03 Jun 2000 16:39:00 -0000 Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2000 16:38:57 -0000 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: First steps with 'being'... Message-ID: <8hbcb1+7rh5@eGroups.com> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Length: 2488 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster From: "=?iso-8859-1?q?Alfred_W._T=FCting?=" coi it has always been highly interesting to me, how people (hence: languages) are dealing with the state of being something/somebody/ somehow etc.. The solution is pretty different from people to people. 1) In modern Mandarin, there (now) exists a 'to be' shi4, used to connect 'nouns', pronouns etc. (like: ta shi zhongguo-ren, he/ she/it is Chinese). Connecting to an adjective, the 'shi' is not necessary/correct (like: ta haokan, he/she/it is good-looking) because 'haokan' etc. is understood (at least by linguists) as a so-called 'status verb'. In ancient language 'shi4' was not necessary - but used as kind of 'this', about Lojban 'ti' - because nouns were put together without it, but with the final 'ye3' ending the phrase (like: zi3 yu2 ye3, You are a fish, but: zi3 fei1 yu2, you are not a fish). 'ye3' is comparable to Lojban 'cu'. 2) In Russian language it's similar: ja inzhenjer, I'm a engineer. But different when talking of the past: ja byl inzhenjer/ja byla inzhenjer, I was-(a)-male-being engineer/I was-(a)-female-being engineer. 3) In Hungarian 'to be' is always expressed (past/present/future) when referring to I, you, we and you (pl). It's not expressed in present of third person (s. and pl.) unless in the sense of 'there is/are' (like: =F6 szep, she - I'd say - is beautiful; =F6 baratom, he - I'd say - is my friend; but: nincs penzem, there-is-not my-money=3D I have no money). This is still different in the past tense, where 'to be' is expressed (like: =F6 volt baratom, he was my friend). Now to Lojban: Is this correct? mi klama zo'e ma .i mi mo .i mi klama ma And what's about this: ma te klama zo'e mi .i mi mo .i ma se klama mi Are there (still) other ways to express these old questions of man(kind)? What's about the other way round with the second phrase? mo mi or: mo cu mi (I'm all other than confident, though). Or: ma mi In "mi mo", mo is representing a whole unknown selbri (with all its unknown places). How can this being narrowed in to a more specific question? In "do na mi" or "do na'e mi", mi is a whole selbri, aren't it? (being-I); are there any possible sumti of mi then? I'm having a couple of grammatical difficulties with 'to be' not expressed in Lojban. Is it the fact that every 'noun' in the function of a selbri also has to have places too? So what are the places of the pro-selbri mi? .aulun. Alfred *=AF=BFs http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de Traces of Butterflies' Dreams - ***/*=99 "Tieh Meng Hen" My Poetry