From nicholas@uci.edu Sun Aug 12 16:41:22 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_1); 12 Aug 2001 23:41:22 -0000 Received: (qmail 17258 invoked from network); 12 Aug 2001 23:41:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 12 Aug 2001 23:41:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta3 with SMTP; 12 Aug 2001 23:41:17 -0000 Received: from [128.195.186.80] (dialin53a-04.ppp.uci.edu [128.195.186.14]) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA10904 for ; Sun, 12 Aug 2001 16:41:14 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: nicholas@e4e.oac.uci.edu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2001 16:42:47 -0700 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Species and relative clauses From: Nick Nicholas >In _The Amazing Body Human_, there is this sentence: >One of the tapeworms, which lives in human beings, has a life-span of >thirty-five years. >I take this to mean not a single individual, but the typical member of a >particular species. So how's this?: >lo'e sricurnu be da ku noi xabju lo remna cu jmive nanca li cimu Out of context, I would have thought it was the other interpretation, but sure, the rendering's fine. The omission of ke'a leaves things somewhat vague, which is actually a good thing. For example, from my preceding email: le'i valsi poi [lu'a ke'a] slabu mi cu cmalu If it *was* one of the tapeworms, and not the typical tapeworm, then we might actually take the "lo broda ku noi brode" Gotcha (see Wiki) to our advantage: pa sricurnu noi xabju lo remna cu jmive nanca li cimu one of {the tapeworms, which dwell in a human,} has a life span in years of 35. >As to the tapeworm: sricurnu, curnrta'eni, or what? You'll be surprised to hear me say this in light of my recent tantrum :-) , but both. curnrta'enia (I'm guessing there's an extra vowel at the end from Greek tainia 'tape; movie') would be the formal term, sricurnu the informal. And I now wonder whether it might not be more pronouncable (and slightly more Hellenocentric, but that never crossed my mind ;-) ) to transliterate 'ae' and 'oe' as ai and oi... 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.