Re: bu'a brouhaha

[John Cowan <cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan>]

la mark. clsn. cusku di'e

> What if
> you have a prenex on a whole slew of sentences, with {tu'e}?  Let's say I'm
> dealing with some unknown predicate....
>
> pa bu'a zo'u tu'e [assorted sentences discussing and maybe clarifying this
> "bu'a"... li'o.. then eventually] .i ro bu'a zo'u mi nelci.
>
> Now, here we have a {bu'a} quantified at the beginning, discussed, and then
> used as a prenex >with whatever definition we had for it still intact<.  Is
> this last sentence to mean "for all thingies, I'm fond (presumably of
> them)"?  Or does the magic behavior of {bu'a} in prenexes kick in?  Does it
> only work when it's not inside another prenex-determined block?

I think that the magic behavior kicks in, and that you have rebound bu'a.
If you want to say "for all thingies", that would be "ro da poi bu'a", which
binds "da" to be all those things which fit in the x1 place of "bu'a".
Selbri quantification should be used sparingly; always ask whether sumti
quantification will do the work.

> In Lojban, we usually specify the thing told with a LE word, permuting the
> selbri so it comes out to x1 and specifying, or use a NU or something.
> This is all fine.  But here, it was *the relationship*, the *selbri* which
> Esther told, not a sumti.  You might be able to do something with a nu or
> du'u, but I think that'd lose something.  Here's one plan, using John's
> interpretation of {kau} (which, incidentally, I think is incomplete, since
> we've used {kau} to mean simply "known!"):
>
> .iki'ubo la .esTER. pu cusku zo'e ledu'u ko'a bu'akau ri
>
> ...Justified by: "ester" earlier expressed to-somthing/one the sentence:
> he1[Mordecai] is-in-some-relation(known!) with the-last[Esther].
>
> Actually, maybe {co'e} instead of {bu'a}.  This uses John's plan of using
> {kau} to flag things in {du'u}-clauses as what the outer clause applies to.
> I'm not sure I like this; any more elegant ideas?

I think this is absolutely sound, substituting "co'ekau" (or "mokau") for
"bu'akau".  Actually, any brivla or pro-brivla will do, but "co'e" imports
the least semantic baggage from its normal use.

I believe the association of "kau" with knowledge is unwarranted.
It was designed for use with indirect questions, and by happenstance the
indirect questions that were thought about at design time involved "djuno"
as the governing selbri.   So I reject the gloss "(known!)".  Specifically,
consider this case:

        la .axacveROC. na djuno le du'u la .esTER. co'ekau la mordeXAIS.
        Ahasuerus did not know the relationship between Esther and Mordecai.

(Excuse any errors in the name transliterations, please.  I'm no Hebraist.)
Here "kau" marks what is not known rather than what is.

--
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban