expansion to sentences

[cbmvax!uunet!gnu.ai.mit.edu!grackle!bob]

Recently, I suggested that:

    Each of the members of BAI can be expanded into a form with fi'o
    and the member's associated gismu; each of these expansions can,
    in turn, be expanded into a relative clause with poi:

    ka'a zo'e   ->   fi'o klama zo'e   ->   poi zo'e klama 

Just now, I discovered the next step, which is to expand a sentence
with a relative clause into two separate sentences.

Here is an example:

    le zarci    ka'a       mi   cu barda                        1.
    le zarci    fi'o klama mi   cu barda                        2.
    the market  gone to by me   is big.

    le zarci   poi   mi klama [ke'a]  cu barda                  3.
    the market which I  go to [it]    is big.

    le zarci goi ko'o cu barda ije mi klama ko'o                4.
    The market, X4,   is big   and I  go to it.

This exercise produces several insights.

As la lojbab says

    BAI was formed with the intention that every place structure place
    could be labelled more or less accurately with one of [its
    members]

But now that I have expanded modal phrases into sentences, I no longer
think of BAI as creating new places or as labelling old ones.  Instead
I think of BAI as creating new predications about the referent of the
first place of the brivla, or as uncovering aspects of the predicate
that were hidden.

Here is an example in which, conventionally, a member of BAI adds a
place:

    mi cusku          zu'i        bau la lojban.                5.
    I express something-typical in-language Lojban.

"bau la lojban." adds an "in-language" place to "cusku" which has the
definition: "express/say...to...in form/media...". 

The sentence expands to:

    mi poi la lojban. bangu          cusku   zu'i               6.
    I  who Lojban is-the-language-of express something-typical.

This expands to two sentences:

    mi cusku zu'i                                               7.
   .ije la lojban bangu mi

The new place becomes a predication about the first place of the
original brivla!

What is happening here?  Am I confusing myself utterly, and
misunderstanding Lojban, or have I found something interesting?  

I am beginning to think the latter: that this exercise tells us that
it is useful to consider an `added' place as being a second
predication in the sentence, in addition to the predication provided
by the main selbri.  The reason the `added place' is a second
predication is that the first predicate did not encompass the notion.
Indeed, if it had, the new place would not have been required.

On the other hand, it is evident that "in language..." could well have
been the fifth place of "cusku".  In a polylingual society, the
language in which something is expressed may be important.  Earlier
this century, for example, as the result of a political conflict among
rural people, well educated people, and city people, Norwegian civil
servants were required to answer letters in the same language as they
were written.

This discussion of new places helps explain the process of creating
definitions: to add a new place to a definition is to merge a new
predication into the existing one.  This suggests that the meaning of
a brivla can be resolved into more primitive parts.  Moreover, when a
member of BAI is used to label an existing place structure, the
process serves to illuminate a predication that is already part of the
definition of the brivla. In this case, BAI serves as a dissecting
tool!


Here is another example using BAI.  In this example, the member of BAI
is placed in a position that looks adverbial:

    mi bai          limna  lo korbi be lo lalxu le porpi bloti  8.    
    I  compelled-ly swim to the edge of the lake from the broken boat

But I understand this as expanding to:

    mi bai zo'e                           limna  ...            9.
    I  compelled by something unspecified swim  ...

which I view as adding a new place to swim, the "compelled-by" place.

The previous sentence can be expanded to

    mi poi zo'e      bapli    limna ...                        10.
    I  who something compells swim ...

and to the two sentences

    mi limna                                                   11.
    ije zo'e bapli mi

I find it interesting that the expansions always seem to attach to the
first place; the first place does appear to have a special role.


Here is another issue: la lojbab says on page 6-17 of the draft
lessons:

    ...a restrictive relative clause serves only to identify the
    relativized phrase, [therefore] it doesn't really affect the truth
    value of the main predication of the sentence, so long as it
    adequately restricts the relativized phrase.

However, I interpret an utterance such as

    le zarci goi ko'o cu barda ije mi klama ko'o               12.
    The market, X4,   is big   and I  go to it.

as requiring both sentences to be true for the utterance as a whole to
be true.

But if this be the case, then "ka'a mi" in the following must be true
for the original un-expanded sentence to be true.

    le zarci    ka'a       mi   cu barda                       13.
    the market  gone to by me   is big.

This suggests that modal phrases are veridical, similarly to sumti
with "lo".


Finally, I have a question: do members of BAI exist to label all
second and subsequent places of all the gismu?  I think `yes'.
Testing this hypothesis would be an interesting exercise for someone;
and in the process that person would half write a lojban-lojban
dictionary!

Consider "lisri" for example:

    lisri      sri      story           story about...told by...to...

    about...                    secu'u  expressing (saying)
                    or perhaps  fau     in the event of (non-causal)
                    or even     sera'a  concerning (pertaining to)

    told by...                  cu'u    as said by source (attribution)
    to...                       teja'o  witnessed by (audience)


That is all for now. I am looking forward to your comments.


    Robert J. Chassell               bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu
    Rattlesnake Mountain Road        (413) 298-4725 or (617) 253-8568 or
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (617) 876-3296 (for messages)