Subject: Re: [lojban] Request for grammar clarifications

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 10:07:14 EDT

In a message dated 5/27/2001 3:12:41 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> 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"?

I will yield to more expert opinion on this, but reasonableness and The Book 
both suggest that {de'i} marks the date on the letter, not present date or 
the date the letter was received or...

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.}
Just odd, I think. It's a combination of inspecific {lo} and specific name 
and so says less than it means. It approaches the use of "is" in English 
with noun predicates and, as such, is very bad Lojban, stylistically. But it 
is not illogical, "there is a woman identical with Jyoti" or "Jyoti is a 
woman." the same sort of objections apply to the relative clauses.

> 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?

Since the meaning of {me} shifted, this one has wandered areound a bit. But 
since that meaning has stablized as "is an instance of things called" it 
seems that the car is OK. The company is actually more of a problem, though 
it seems to get in too.

> 
> 
> 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}.
> 
Well, why use either? On the other hand, {ri} is presumably for a completed 
description, which {lemi mensi poi...} presumably is not yet, while {ke'a} is 
specifically for internal use {lemi mensi poi la rikis martin se nelci ke'a}

As I said, these are by the book as I understand it and I yield to deeper 
insights -- not necessarily to xorxes occasionally aberrant grousing (htough 
those are all too often ultimately right).