Subject: First steps with 'being'...

From: "Alfred W. Tüting" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2000 16:38:57 -0000

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: ö szep, she - I'd say - is beautiful; ö baratom,
he - 
I'd say - is my friend; but: nincs penzem, there-is-not my-money= I
have no money). This is still different in the past tense, 
where 'to be' is expressed (like: ö 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 *¯¿s

http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de
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