From nicholas@uci.edu Sun May 27 01:12:16 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_1_3); 27 May 2001 08:12:15 -0000 Received: (qmail 79681 invoked from network); 27 May 2001 08:12:15 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m8.onelist.org with QMQP; 27 May 2001 08:12:15 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta2 with SMTP; 27 May 2001 08:12:15 -0000 Received: from [128.195.187.55] (dialin53c-35.ppp.uci.edu [128.195.187.45]) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id BAA22862 for ; Sun, 27 May 2001 01:12:14 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: nicholas@e4e.oac.uci.edu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 01:14:29 -0700 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Request for grammar clarifications From: Nick Nicholas 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. nicholas@uci.edu www.opoudjis.net "Most Byzantine historians felt they knew enough to use the optatives correctly; some of them were right." --- Harry Turtledove.