Re: cleft place structures

["Arthur W. Protin Jr." (GC-ACCURATE) <cbmvax!uunet!PICA.ARMY.MIL!protin>]

Folks,
    I guess I responded to lojbab's request too soon.  The
systemization that I spoke up for has little or nothing to do 
with the problem under discussion.  Sorry.

    Without many examples to bias my interpretation of those
gismu definitions, I would have tried to elipse all of the
sentence (I wanted the lojban word here but I forget which
one it is "bridi"?) of "I paint-spread red on the wall" except
for "paint-spread".  I would look up a cmavo to abstact the
brivda (again, I am without my cheat sheet), something like "lo".
The result would have been like:

mi galfi le blanu bitmu le xunre bitmu lo cinta preja
I modify the blue wall into the red wall by the "relation" paint-spread.

Now, I am sure that "lo" is not the right word because the right
one probably needs a terminator.  (PS. the use of "le" in the
examples has changed my mind about a needed terminator.)
The closest thing in English to what I would do is the gerund,
a verb that becomes a noun by its usage. Thus the translation
would more figuratively be:

I modify the blue wall into the red wall by paint-spreading.

This has the obvious drawback for computers and other droids
that there is an implied sentence that can only be constructed
by the semantic content of the original.  The implied sentence
(guessing at the place structure of "preja" and using HH as the past
indicator):

mi HH preja le xunre cinta le blanu bitmu
I did spread the red paint on the blue wall.

The revised place structure and its sample usage don't buy
much since a x1/x4 exchange indicator would suffice with the 
old place structure (and leaving the displaced x1 elipsed).
And suppose I want to elipse or otherwise omit the event/process
(relation) by which the modification was accomplished but
still identify the agent that brought about the modification.

    thank you all,
    Art


Arthur Protin <protin@pica.army.mil>
These are my personal views and do not reflect those of my boss
or this installation.