Subject: Re: [lojban] ka + makau (was: ce'u (was: vliju'a

From: Rob Speer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 19:28:09 -0400

I'm a bit surprised by the sudden urge people have to redefine generally
accepted uses of {kau}.

On Wed, Aug 08, 2001 at 03:33:16AM +0100, And Rosta wrote:
> OTOH, you could insist that the B sentences would have to be:
> 
> ma kau goi ko'a zo'u mi cucli tu'odu'u ko'a cliva
> ma kau goi ko'a zo'u mi do frica tu'odu'u ce'u prami ko'a 
> ma kau poi cmene mi ku'o goi ko'a zo'u I changed ko'a

And I do.

The other sentences you used have been established by the Book and usage to all
have meaning (A).

---

In response to another thread which I didn't have time to reply to then: to
assert that abstractions in Lojban are instantly replaced by their referents is
absurd. "I know how tall Bob is" does not mean "I know 150 centimeters" because
"evaluating" the abstraction like this removes all meaning that it had.
Similarly, in Lojban, {mi djuno le ni galtu po la bob} expresses a different
(and much more sensical) fact than {mi djuno le 150 centre}. It doesn't even
mean {mi djuno lenu le ni galtu po la bob. centre li 150}, because you're not
saying how specifically you know Bob's height, and you're not communicating to
the listener what that height is.

(The word 'centre' looks odd. I was thinking of using the longer 'centymitre'
for its appeal as a cognate.)

So someone suggested that any {jei} abstraction should be treated as if it
wasn't there and replaced by 'true' or 'false', immediately. First of all, this
would require some rule which makes {lejei nei jitfa} ungrammatical, or else
what would you put in its place? In addition, this makes the vast majority of
sentences involving {jei} useless.
{ni} doesn't work this way. {nu} definitely doesn't work this way (events are
difficult to 'know' out of context). So why should {jei}?

-- 
Rob Speer