Re: new use for bi'u: marks new information

[CJ FINE <cbmvax!uunet!bradford.ac.uk!C.J.Fine>]

John Cowan:
>
>
> I propose that bi'u, explained in JL as a forethought de-emphasizer of a
> single word, be moved to selma'o UI and used as a "new information" flag.
> One of the current problems with Lojban is that a speaker may refer to
> someone as "le prenu", perhaps assigning a ko'a-series pro-sumti.  Later
> in the same or another speaker's remarks, the phrase "le prenu" appears
> again.  Is this the same or another?  There's no way to be sure.
>
> All languages have ways of expressing this distinction.  English uses
> its articles ("A man went to the store.  Later, the man..."); Russian uses
> word order; Japanese, particles.  Under this proposal, "le prenu" would
> be taken to refer to the same person, whereas "lebi'u prenu" would signal
> the introduction of a new person.  Like all UI particles, "bi'u" would be
> optional and would have no influence on the grammar; when attached to a
> structure-opening cmavo such as "le", its influence would extend over the
> whole structure "le prenu [ku]".
>
> Naturally, "bi'unai" would be available for explicitly tagging old
 information.
>

I like this (and think it partly meets my call for a topicaliser too).

One place that it is particularly suitable is in introducing objects
into narrative. As you say, in English we use "a" and "the" for this,
but I do not believe that "lo" and "le" are appropriate translations
(fi'onai tugni la nik .ia). I prefer to use "le" from the first
occurrence of the specific individuals in the story, because they are
specific - but what they are not is known, so "lebi'u prenu goi ko'a
..." followed later by "le ko'a zdani" would make sense to me. Of
course, at the beginning of the story you would generally leave out the
"bi'u".

		kolin