Re: A fairy tale

[And Rosta <cbmvax!uunet!UCL.AC.UK!ucleaar>]

Ivan:
> >  From: cowan%snark.thyrsus.com%cbmvax@net.UU.uunet (John Cowan)
> >  Date: Tue, 24 Mar 92 14:39:40 EST
> >
> >  The place structures confirm that "slabu" and "cnino" are the parallel
> >  ones.  A better gloss of "slabu" would be "familiar".  Unfortunately,
> >  Bob has said repeatedly that "ni slabu" is "age" as in "length of life".
> >  I have complained about this almost as often but to no avail.
> He's not entirely wrong about this (although {ni citno} would be more
> correct).  See below.
> >  To my way of thinking, the notion that length of life has something to do
> >  with old-ness is an un-thought-out reflex of the English idiom "He
> >  is six years old."
> Not necessarily.  Let's see if you follow me.
> A new ruler, {cnino turni}, is one who has become a ruler recently
> (that is, one since whose ascension a short time has passed).  The
> opposite is {to'e cnino turni}, or {slabu turni}.
> A young ruler, {citno turni}, is one who has been born recently (that
> is, one since whose birth a short time has passed).  The opposite is
> {to'e citno turni}.
> Similarly, a {cnino pendo} is a person of any age who has recently
> become a friend, while {citno pendo} is a young person who is a friend
> (and may have been one for a long time), and so on.
> But with {remna} the two constructions mean the same.  {cnino remna}
> is someone who has recently become a human being, most likely by being
> born as one, and as such is synonymous to {citno remna}.

It seems that _cnino_ is rather like a tense operator: it takes as its
argument some predication (or 'event' in the broad lojban sense).
Are there other gismu like this?
Does _cnino blanu_ mean "newly blue" or can it also mean "blue, & newly
something"?

> >  Bob has proposed "river-anus" for what in English is called a river mouth.
>
> Why not `river penis' or `river vulva'?  (The output is liquid.)

'river urethra', rather?

---
And