Chapter 4

It's me again.

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but every time I look real closely at a
lesson, I find some questions.  Today I flipped through lesson 4, and here
are one or two of the questions I have.

First off, in the elision rules, page 4-17, it says, near the bottom of the
page, that kei can always be elided before an explicit cu.  I'm not so
sure.  We know that cu can occur within a tanru, so I can see cases where
it would matter.  Let's see if I can cook up an example.

Um, maybe not.  I guess I was wrong.  I won't delete the question because I
might be right and not smart enough to prove it.  This way, the rest of you
all can chew on it, and maybe figure it out.

The other weirdness I found is on page 4-28.  It gives the translation for
(sexually neutral) parent as 'se panzi'.  Now, from the place structure of
'panzi', that could only mean the mother, since panzi is defined as "x1 is
an offspring of mother x2 and father x3".  For father, we'd need 'te panzi'
(assuming I remember my converters right).  Defining places for mother and
father separately in these family relationships seems a little weird and
non-Lojbanic (as if I have a real feel for what's Lojbanic).  It would make
more sense to have one place for "parent(s)" and use a compound sumti to
indicate both.  Then, 'se panzi' would work quite nicely for sing. and pl.
parent(s), and all will be right with the world.  Ditto for bersa and
tixnu.  After all, bruna has only one 'parent' place.  I think this is one
of the few times where I'm actually right about a thing-to-be-changed in
Lojban.  This has an elegant fix.

Oof.  Just turned the page.  Page 4-29, translation of 'spofa' as "... is
broken/inoperable..."  I suppose "inoperative" would be better?  Sorry to
pick nits on a public forum; it just hit me in mid-critique.

Am I driving everyone nuts with these little dumb questions (except la
nitcion., who is, of course, already nuts .uibu)?

~mark