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Two queries
Hey.
I have a pair of little questions for you all. One's semantic, and one's
stylistic, so I'm giving the grammar a break.
Semantic: We all know that {ke'a} in a subordinate clause refers back to
the sumti being described/restricted. What if you have nested subordinate
clauses and want to use the outer {ke'a} in the inner clause? I mean like:
mi catlu le nanmu poi do pu tavla le ninmu poi [ke'a] prami ke'a
The first {ke'a} might be ellipsizable, and maybe this isn't the best
example, but I think you can see the problem. Just saying that {ke'a} is
always the innermost one is not a good answer, I think. Sometimes you want
to lower it one further down. I suspect the best answer is simply to use
subscripting: {ke'axipa} is innermost or just {ke'a}, the next one out is
{ke'axire} and so on. This sound good? Already suggested?
Stylistics: I know that stylistics aren't really done for Lojban yet, but
I wanted to ask around on this anyway (listen up, O Nick!). We have the SE
conversion for selbri. As the book mentions, something like {sevete
BRIVLA} is legal, but mega-confusing. Basically, you wouldn't want to use
more that one SE at a time. I propose that multiple SE be acceptable (yes,
I know it needn't be a proposition), under a particular circumstance: that
it be of form {setese}. That is, one conversion, then another, then the
first again. This amounts to swapping any two places (not just one with
first), and the places are easily identifiable. I think this can make
things much easier for word-order, and really isn't too tough to follow.
Anyone think this is hideous?
~mark