Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: Grammar Clarifications

From: Logical Language Group <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 19:21:03 -0400

At 03:31 PM 05/30/2001 -0400, [email-masked] wrote:
>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 latter seems to be an avoidance of using "la'e", which is what we would 
normally think of when referring to

>words and their application to things or,

and I'm not sure what the distinction you are trying for in the following 
alternative:

>rather, the things they were applied to, not about the referents of the
>expressions that followed the {me}.

But I think that "steci be [sumti]" would have worked for both of those 
examples.
ti steci be la kraislr karce
la loglyn se kevna lo steci be zo me

>The phenomenon intended is common enough
>to deserve a cheap means (and {me} now seems virtually useless, given {du}
>and other ordinary features).

The primary use of "me", as with several other words, is the conversion 
from a sumti to a selbri, whenever we have a reason to do so and don't want 
to figure a more elegant way of doing it (if one is possible). "du" 
doesn't accomplish that exactly - it equates two or more sumti. "me" 
causes one to think of "being a [sumti] as itself a predication.
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org