Subject: Re: [lojban] sei

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2001 01:58:19 -0400

At 06:17 PM 06/05/2001 -0400, Rob Speer wrote:
>A style of dialogue I've seen in other parts of Alice (I know stylistic issues
>are supposed to wait until the end, but this is a huge difference) does the
>obvious thing and uses lu...li'u as the x2 of {cusku} or the x1 of {preti} or
>something of the sort. If the text needs to be interrupted in the middle, it
>uses {fa} to return to the place containing the quote.
>
>`What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. `Explain yourself!'
>lu ma smuni di'u li'u se cusku .o'onairu'edai ga'idai le ciftoldi fa lu
>ko ko ciksi li'u

This approach works only because of the peculiarities of dai, which in turn 
are confined to attitudinal notes. There is an example in Saki's _The Open 
Window_ which is when we first introduced sei, where the metalinguistic 
comment in the middle of the quote is more than merely an indication of 
attitude - such as modifying the above to be
>`What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar, pointing at Alice 
>sternly, while pacing the floor. `Explain yourself!'

sei is limited only by what you can express in a selbri (and using 
connectives and be/bei, that is quite a lot).

lojbab

--
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