Some sample sentences from Rory Hinnen and the LA Group

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

Rory Hinnen sent me the following, which I've briefly annotated, but am
posting for everyone's benefit.  Lots of good examples.

le cmalu mlatu crane le bardu gerku
The small cat is in front of the large dog
**close - you need a "cu" before crane.  Yours means:
the small-cat in-front-of thing, the large-dog, ... with no selbri
        Originally, I wanted to write this:
le cmalu mlatu va le bardu gerku, but jim didn't like that.  Oh, well.
**the small cat, near the large dog, ... (again no selbri)  Try:
**le cmalu mlatu cu jibni le barda gerku

ti poi gerku cu prami le mlatu
the dog loves the cat
**This which dogs, loves the cat.  "le gerku" would have been fine, with "cu"
**"ti" should be used only when pointing.  The 'other' way to say "this dog"
** is "le vi gerku"
.i ma prami le mlatu
what loves the cat?
.i ma se prami le mlatu
what does the cat love?
        (I wanted to trip them up with se and word order)
** last two were excellent
mi cadzu vi le srasu
I walk on the grass.
** I think that lesson 4a has the revised place struture of walk, which
**specifies "on surface ..."  Yours technically is "I walk at the grass.",
**which certainly should be understood.
mi cadzu vi le srasu le ckule le ru'azda le klazi be va le zdani
(made this one up to fill up all the cases and explore vi&va)
I walk on the grass to school from home via the street near the building
** using the old place struture of walk, this looks fine
do cadzu mo
Where are you walking to?
** No, you wanted "ma".  You have "You are a walking _____.", where
**cadzu mo is a tanru
le ckule se cadzu mi
To school I'm walking.
**need cu before se.
**Yours is "The school-walking_destination, I, ..."
do cadzu fi mo
Where are you walking from?
**ma again. This is ungrammatical
le ru'azda te cadzu mi
I'm walking from home.
** need cu before te

do gasnu ma?
What are you doing?
** good
mi gasnu lenu cilre la lojban. .i do gasnu ma
I'm doing the event of learning lojban. What are you doing?
        (kind of a snippy answer, actually)
**excellent
mi na cilre la lojban. .i mi zutse le stizu
I'm not learning lojban.  I'm sitting in the chair.

(Jim had a lot of problems with the last little exchange.  He said I was
taking for granted the replication of the actor "mi".)
**He's right in that the place was elliptically unspecified.  In natural usage,
**that would be the obvious value, but formally the translation is:
**I'm doing the event of ... learning lojban. What are you doing?
**I think is among the most standard ellipses to try the first sumti in an
**ellipsized first place of an x2 abstraction like this.  But if the listener
**is unsure, it/she/he replies ".i ma cilre la lojban"

ko catlu .i le crino nanmu
Look! A green man!
        (Jim made me put the le in there, and then convinced me he was right.)
** he's wrong.  Without it, it translates: "Look! Green man!", or making
** the ellipsis explicit:  "Look! [...(Something unspecified) greenly-mans.]
** what he made it was "Look! The green man ... (trailing off.  .oi finish the
** sentence there is no implicit or explicit selbri)
ko sisti .i mi na catlu le crino nanmu

We argued for a while le or lo in the above sentence, but we eventually
came to the conclusion that it didn't matter because of the negation.
But without negation, I should go with lo).
** Either could be correct.  "lo" claims that it really was a green man,
** rather than possibly a picture of one.  Usually English speakers use "lo"
** for indefinites, but you could have a specific one in mind.  "le" is
** definite - you DO have a specific one in mind, but it is only being
** described as a man for convenience of conversation.  In this context, "le"
** would normally be taken as referring to the green man of the previous
** observative, since that is the logical 'thing described' that the speaker
** could expect the listener to assume.  But there ARE contexts where the
** exact same conversation could have the last sentence referring to a
** different green man.  But not in print.

**lojbab