Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: Grammar Clarifications

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 15:31:51 EDT

In a message dated 5/30/2001 9:44:33 AM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> Essentially that there was no way of representing what
> "me" means now, whereas what "me" used to mean is just
> "steci be" = "pertains to".
> 
Yes, this is what I thought I recalled. Except that {steci be} does not do 
justice to the first use JCB gave to it (though it surely passed through this 
in the traditional JCB path from light to miasma): The first two uses were 
{ti me la Kraislr karce} (translating to Lojban, I hope) and {la loglan se 
kevna lo me zo me} "There is a me-shaped hole in Loglan" (JCB inevitably 
thought this the cleverest use of "me," and it does have a charm). The point 
is that {me} was originally about words and their application to things or, 
rather, the things they were applied to, not about the referents of the 
expressions that followed the {me}. The phenomenon intended is common enough 
to deserve a cheap means (and {me} now seems virtually useless, given {du} 
and other ordinary features).