Subject: Request for grammar clarifications

From: Nick Nicholas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 01:14:29 -0700

la xorxes. has made some comments on my grammar (and misunderstandings
thereof!) in the lessons, for which I am grateful. The following I'm not
sure about, and would like some clarification. I don't *really* want the
typical Lojban list thirty-day discussion, and most of these should really
be resolvable by fiat.

1) de'i

Is it legal to say {ti xatra de'i li pano}, and by consequence {le xatra be
de'i li pano}? Does the date cmavo introduce a date *conventionally*
associated with the predicate (as I remember it), so that you can say this
is a letter on the tenth? Or is {de'i} tantamount to {ca}, deriving its
semantics *only* from {detri}, in which case such an utterance would be
misleading? (It's a letter on the tenth, but it's still a letter today.) In
other words, does {de'i} correspond to "dated", or to "on"?

2) du

Is {lo ninmu du la djiotis.} an erroneous statement? Not stylistically
undesirable, but demonstrably illogical or false? Is the fact that du is
intended to render as equal *names* of a thing, rather than just
descriptions, sufficient to do so? In a related sense, can you legitimately
say {la ranjit. no'u lo pendo be la djiotis.}? This, after all, is the same
as {la ranjit. noi du lo pendo be la djiotis.}

3) me

Can you say {le vi karce cu me la ford.}? Do brand names become names for
the wares themselves? Is it OK for {la ford.} to name both manufacturer and
product? Should the latter be referred to only as {lai ford.}, to avoid
confusion?

4) ke'a

I'm only doing it for paedagogical reasons, but is there any reason {le mi
mensi poi ri nelci la rikis.martin.} can't mean exactly the same as {le mi
mensi poi ke'a nelci la rikis.martin.}? I'm thinking the {ke'a} *has* to be
coindexed with {ri}, and thus would be inserted into the relative clause as
{le mi mensi poi ke'a nelci la rikis.martin. fa ke'a}.

Nick Nicholas, TLG, UCI, USA. [email-masked] www.opoudjis.net
"Most Byzantine historians felt they knew enough to use the optatives
correctly; some of them were right." --- Harry Turtledove.