Re: la bradfrd jbogirz

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

Amanda asks:
>
> I, a very beginning lojbanist, read and attempted to translate A.D.M.Smith's
> letter, and i have a few questions....
>
> Am i right in reading "le mi selci'a" as "my text"?  "mi" here serves as a
> possessive?

Yes. This is an anomalous construction that has been there since the
early days. It looks like

	le/lo <sumti> <selbri>
eg	le ko'a broda
which is by definition equivalent to
	le broda pe ko'a
	"Its broda"

> Why does it start with "coi la tcidu"... tcidu is a gismu, right?  Does "la"
> put tcidu into the "vocative case"?

Yes and no. "coi" can be followed by a number of things, most commonly
cmene (names) and sumti (arguments), but also selbri ("tcidu" is a
gismu, but that is its word-class. Its grammatical function here is as a
selbri).  It is the "coi" that puts what follows in the 'vocative case'
as you put it (more precisely, specifies that its role in the sentence
is to identify the se tavla (the spoken to) rather than any function
in the main bridi.)

All the following are therefore grammatical:
1) coi .tcid. "Hello, Tcid" - Tcid is a name, and would be interpreted
by most lojbanists as derived from "tcidu", hence "Reader"; but it could
be an entirely unrelated name. (The pause is required before the name.)

2) coi doi tcid. "Hello O Tcid" - Exactly the same, except that a pause
is not required after "doi". It is not clear whether there is a
pragmatic difference in the presence or absence of "doi". (If there were
no COI present, it would be required, otherwise there would be
nothing to indicate the cmene was vocative.)

3) coi la tcid "Hello, one named Tcid" - grammatically, this is
different, as the thing following the "coi" is a sumti, but it is not
clear to me what semantic difference there is, if any. I regard this
form as stylistically dispreferred, because it contains a more
complicated structure (LA cmene) than 1) and 2); but it may be there are
cases when it makes a useful distinction. And of course others may
disagree with my judgement.  It does not require a pause after "la".

4) coi le/lo tcidu "Hello reader(s)" - this addresses those designated
by the sumti "le/lo tcidu", which is a description: "the (particular)
reader(s)" or "some reader(s)" respectively. It is not in any sense
naming them.

5) coi la tcidu "Hello, one(s) named 'reader'" - this is similar, but it
is making a name out the description. It would most likely apply when
addressing a group who are conventionally named "Reader". Semantically
this is similar to "coi .tcid", but it is more determinate, in that it
is precise that the addressees are named "Reader" rather than, for
example, some foreign name that happens to be rendered "tcid" in Lojban.

6) coi tcidu "Hello reader(s)" - I had forgotten this form was available
until I started writing this answer. I presume it is identical to "coi
lo tcidu".

Andrew originally wrote 3). I recommended 1), or, better, 4); he posted
5) in his corrected version; I now favor 6).

> What exactly does "bo" do?  Extract the x1 of the previous sentence?

"bo" occurs in various places in the grammar, and seems to me to have
two rather different functions.
The less common, in tanru and mex, is a tight-binding grouping operator,
so	melbi cmalu bo nixli ckule
=	melbi ke cmalu nixli ke'e ckule
=	(beautiful (small girls)) school
= 	'school for small girls who are beautiful'

What turns out to be a much more common use, exemplified in Andrew's
text, is to make some cmavo apply to a whole sentence, or at any rate
to a larger scope than would otherwise be the case.

So	.ije semu'ibo lemi jibri se nelci mi
means "And therefore my job is liked by me".

If the "bo" were not there, the "semu'i" would swallow the following
sumti, giving:
	.ije semu'i lemi jibri se nelci mi
	"And with-motivated-result: my job, (something) is liked by me"

> What does he mean by "skami nelci"?  ("mi skami nelci")

"skami nelci" means "is a (computer for purpose ...) liker of ...",
for which a reasonable interpretation is "computer liker". (It could
also mean he is a computer that likes something.)

> Doesn't "tarmi naldikni" mean something like "shaped disorder"?  Or does it
> mean "disordered shape" (seemingly a more appropriate description of a fan)?

Not quite. "naldikni" means "is other-than regular", so "tarmi naldikni"
is "is a shape kind-of irregular-thing". "Disorder" would be an
abstraction ("ka naldikni" or "nu naldikni").

Notice Andrew originally had "naldikni tarmi", which in English looks
like "irregular shape". However, my suggestion was that there were two
problems with that. The more serious is that "tarmi" means "is a/the
form of" - a shape, not an object. In English, we can refer to (our
perception of) an object as "a shape", but in Lojban this is not
appropriate - in fact, better would be to use the x2: "le se tarmi" =
"the shaped thing", and "le naldikni se tarmi" would be OK for "the
irregular shaped thing".

I felt there was a further problem, in that "dikni" is not specific as
to the kind of regularity - time, form, sequence, whatever. Probably
"le naldikni se tarmi" would do, as the presence of the brivla "tarmi"
would bring us into the realm of shapes (it *could* be 'the
irregularly-occurring shaped-thing', but that seems less likely), but
neater, in my view, is to turn it round. This is partly because of my
propensity for using Lojban in distinctly non-English ways: I like
"vorme blanu" for "blue door" (which would not be appropriate if I were
going on to say what it was a door to, since using "vorme blanu" makes
its blueness, and the place-structure of "blanu", salient).

>
> Finally... how does the last sentence ("ri jo'u gi snuji lei sovda joi tamca
> le burna'a gi le ckafi") work?  Is "snuji" the selbri here?  Why is "gi"
> in front of the selbri and in front of a sumti?  How does this work?

You're right, it's ungrammatical. Andrew's original had
	ri du snuji ... gi'e le ckafi
which was ungrammatical, because "gi'e" must be followed by a selbri (+
following sumti). He meant either
	ri du le snuji  ... .e le ckafi
or
	ri snuji ... gi'e ckafi

The latter is very much preferable, because "du" has the function of
identifying, not predicating.

However, I observed that this form expands to
	ri snuji ... .ije ri ckafi
(ignoring the possibility that "ri" would pick up something else in the
second sentence). I suggested that he did not mean to say that his lunch
was a sandwich and it was also coffee, but that it was jointly both: "jo'u".
Probably the best way to say this would be to get these in sumti form,
repeating a selbri:
	.i mi citka le snuji ... ku jo'u le ckafi
or better
	.i sanmi le snuji ... ku jo'u le ckafi
	"(Something) is a meal of a sandwich ... and coffee"
but we went for a connected selbri.

Using a selbri is a little problematical for two reasons. First, the
semantics of non-logically connected selbri are a bit odd: "is
a-sandwich-and-jointly-coffee" (?). Secondly, there does not appear to be a
way to do it in afterthought. (I think this is a hole in the grammar)
We found that we could do it by a special form of the forethought
connective
	ge ... gi ...
the special form being needed for a non-logical connective:
	jo'u gi ... gi ...
almost anything can go in the two arms (the same in both arms), and the
result it the same kind of entity - in this case, bridi-tails.
So the corrected version is:

	.i ri jo'u gi snuji lei sovda joi tamca le burna'a gi ckafi
>
> Thank you for your patience...
> amanda

je'e.uisai If you don't ask, you don't learn; and answering such questions
helps me to learn too.

	co'omi'e kolin