Re: no subject heading

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

Iain, I think you are right that NU is often similar in meaning to
JAIBAI phrases; but I think you overstating the degree of synonymity.
Much depends on the particualr NU.

This is easier to see if you turn your JAIBAI round thus:

	le jaila'u ciska be faimi cu barda =
(1)	da voi mi ciska la'u ke'a cu barda
(incidentally, I am not convinced that "barda" is a suitable selbri
here. I suspect that so'imei is better).

and similarly
(2)	da voi le xamsi cu blanu sekai ke'a cu carmi
(3)	da voi mi cilre la lojban. pe'u ke'a cu nandu

which you are claiming are effectively synonymous with
(4)         le ni mi ciska cu barda
(5)         le ka le xamsi cu blanu kei cu carmi
(6)         le pu'u mi cilre la lojban. cu nandu
respectively.

I belive that there is an abstract semantic difference in that "ke'a",
and hence "da", is one of the objects related by the description-selbri.
Thus the selbri in the description in (1) is
	x1 ciska x2 x3 la'u x4
x1 writes x2 on x3 in quantity x4
whereas the inner bridi in (4) uses the different selbri
	x1 ciska x2 x3
x1 writes x2 on x3,
and then extracts from the whole bridi a property which is not
there as a terbri.

Now I accept that in many cases - and I think "ni"/"la'u" is one of them
- the effect of this difference is slight to null. (My English for the
selbri in (1) suggests that it is the quantity of se ciska that is of
interest rather than the quantity of nu ciska, but I think this is just
an artifact of translation). I also think that "pu'u"/"pu'e" is very
close.

But I think the difference is greater in the case of "sekai"/"ka", and
greater still for "nu"/"fau", and it lies in the fact that the BAI
sumti, being part of the relationship expressed by the bridi, is (or may
be) more incidental or partial than the LENU abstraction.

Thus for me, several things could answer "le xamsi cu blanu sekai ma"
that would not fit "ma ka le xamsi cu blanu", for example "loka crino".

Your interpretation of "fau" would require it to mean "constituting the
event that", which is not how I have ever interpreted it, and nor,
apparently, do Bob or John.

> I accept that some of these may have acquired
> alternative connotations through usage or other precedent,
> although the case for "fau" in that regard doesn't sound
> particularly strong to me at the moment.  Bob's example
>
>         mi ciska cusku fi do fau lenu mi pensi ledo se cusku
>
> seems to be crying out for a nice simple "ca", "mu'i",
> or "seja'e".  If you really want that sort of vagueness,
> I think there are other ways of doing it, such as
> "fi'o se kansa".
>
> Similarly John's
>
>         fau le nu fagri kei ko porpygau le glaci
>
> sounds like he really means "ca le nu fagri", or possibly
> "co'a le nu fagri", with a "da'i" if you want to emphasise
> the hypothetical nature of the event.
>
I agree that a "da'i" would be appropriate here. But I think there is a
real need for "fau" in this sense - "ca" is often tempting because of
the English concessive "when", but is often not appropriate.

	kolin