Re: coi kolin.

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

> This was my first attempt at a non-trivial jboselsku.

And a superb attempt it is, with a few incredibly minor errors, most of them
reflecting older versions of the grammar.  Overall, completely intelligible
on first reading.

> > coi kolin. do mo
>
> > ni'o mi ckire do le vrici poi do pu benji ke'a
> > .i mi pu cpacu so'o selste goi ko'a le skami selfu po'u la'o by langserv by
> > po'e la koLYMbi,as.
> > .i ko'a pisu'osi'e mixre
> > .i mi lifri le nu le pu'u mi cilre la lojban. ko'a cu milxe nandu
> > .i secau da poi ctuca cukta ku mi nitcuku'i le nu

This "ku" is no longer grammatical; "ku" is now used only the contexts
LE/LA...ku, tag KU, <quantifier> <selbri> KU, and NAKU.

"nitcuku'i" should be "nitcyku'i" or just "tcuku'i"; otherwise the "ni"
falls off and becomes the quantity abstractor cmavo.

> > su'o prenu cu simxu benji su'o selsku mi
> > .i mi pu troci le mu'e mi co'a cmima be le me la lojban.

"be" unnecessary here, I think; "mu'e" supports a full bridi, with no
need to bind trailing arguments into the selbri.

> > ke termrilu liste kei tai le nu mi benji fi ge le samselfu

You are not "a member of the list", as in English; you are "a member of the
listed-set", so change "liste" to "selste".  The x2 place of "cmima" always
designates a set; in fact, "selcmi" is the regular Lojban word for
"extensionally defined set" (as opposed to "girzu" which is an intensionally
defined set).

> > po'u la listserv. po'e cy.ubuvymyby gi la'o my lojban-list-request my
> > po'e la'o zy snark.thyrsus.com zy kei
> > ja'eku'i pisu'oba'eso'u capu ka snada

I don't understand "pisu'oso'u"; it's grammatical, but not yet defined as
a meaningful quantity.  What did you have in mind?

> > .i cumki fa le nu la'edi'u ba cenba .ijeku'i ze'aca bo
> > .e'uru'e ma'a ba ru'inai benji da
>
> > ni'o ba le nu mi pu cusku di'u ku mi pu terbenji lo terspuda
> > da po'u la'o by cowan@snark.thyrsus.com by
> > .ije seki'u bo mi jinvi le du'u la'a mi co'a terbenji
> > zo'e pe le termrilu liste

"zo'e pe" is a semantically suspect construction: "zo'e" is used for arguments
that you are not bothering to articulate, so a restrictive relative phrase
comes out something like "Something I'm not mentioning but which pertains to..."
Try "da pe"; also see below.

> > co'omi'e .i,n .alegZANdr.

> Discussion.
>
> "mi ckire do le vrici poi do pu benji ke'a":
>         I originally said "mi ckire do le nu do pu benji leta vrici",
> which is of course wrong, since "leta vrici" means "that one's miscellany",
> but Colin also complained that words such as "ta" need some sort of
> extra-linguistic designation such as pointing.  We couldn't however
> agree whether "leva" would suffer from the same problem.  Logdata3.lex
> describes "leva" (mysteriously, to me) as "non-demonstrative" -
> can anyone elucidate?

"Le va vrici" means "that which I describe as a [medium distance] miscellany".
Despite the orthography, "va" belongs with "vrici" rather than with "le";
the selbri "va vrici" is "x1 is a miscellaneous thing at a medium distance
from the speaker."  So pointing is not required.

In this context, I don't see that specifying the location of the object is
at all relevant to the sentence; "le" by itself has some of the force of
English "that" = "the one you know about, the one I have in mind".

> "ko'a pisu'osi'e mixre":
>         I've been experimenting with various expressions in an attempt
> to capture the sense of "adverbs of degree" such as "somewhat"
> and "a little bit".  Sometimes a particular gismu such as "milxe"
> or "mulno" fits the bill, but there are lots of nice quantifiers
> sitting there in selma'o PA just crying out to be used, if only
> I could find the right way to do it.  "Si'e" seems the least
> objectionable so far, but is it a good general-purpose method?

I suspect that "ko'a pisu'osi'e mixre" is meant to mean "They are somewhat
mixed", but this is an English idiom.  A better translation of your Lojban
would be something like "They are non-zero fractions of mixtures."  It
escapes me how a document can be a mixture (of what ingredients?).

I would suggest "ko'a na'e dunli simxu [le ka ...]" = "They are non-equal-ly
mutual [in the quality of ...]".

> "mi pu troci le mu'e mi co'a cmima li'o":
>         I originally wrote "mi pu troci le nu mi binxo pa le cmima li'o",
> but Colin reckoned that this and anything else we could think
> of for "lo se binxo" is going to designate something specific,
> rather than describe what is really a change of state.  If that
> is correct, then we can't use "binxo" for the most common English
> use of the verb "become", unless we ignore the second place and
> just say something like "binxo co cmima".  Is that right?

"binxo" is a much-disputed gismu, and I don't intend to re-open the can
of worms concerning its meaning.  "co'a" does the job much better, IMHO.

> ".e'uru'e ma'a ba ru'inai benji da":
>         I'm not sure about the use of "da" here.  (I don't intend
> to repeat what I originally had in its place.)  It sounds to me
> far too definite, as if there was something specific that we
> ought to be sending to one another.  Does "dasa'enai" give
> the right flavour of "something or other"?

Probably not.  Your original paraphrases as "I mildly suggest that there
is something we will occasionally send."  This is the right place for "zo'e"
or just ellipsis:  ".e'uru'e ma''a ba ru'inai benji".

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