Subject: Re: [lojban] First steps with 'being'...

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2000 11:14:47 PDT

la aulun cusku di'e

>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

They are grammatical, but I think they might not yet
mean what you want. I suppose the metaphor of existence
as a voyage is fairly universal, but I think that we are
not yet at the point in Lojban where we can take even
that kind of metaphor for granted.

>Are there (still) other ways to express these old questions of
>man(kind)?

Maybe: {i ma mi krasi i ma mi fanmo}

{mi mo} doesn't involve metaphors, but it could be too vague.
You can give as profound or as shallow an answer as you like.

>What's about the other way round with the second phrase? mo mi or: mo
>cu mi (I'm all other than confident, though).

{mo mi} is fine, {mo} is still the selbri and {mi} a sumti.
The other is wrong, because cu can only come before a selbri.

>Or: ma mi

This is ok, but it has no selbri. I would interpret it
as {ma mi co'e}, where the selbri in question is given
by context.

>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?

Maybe with a tanru? {mi zasti mo} or {mi mo zasti}

>In "do na mi" or "do na'e mi", mi is a whole selbri, aren't it?
>(being-I);

No, {mi} is always a sumti. Any sumti can be made into a selbri
with {me}: {do na me mi}

>are there any possible sumti of mi then?

{me <sumti>} only has one place, it means "x1 is one of the
referents of <sumti>".

co'o mi'e xorxes

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