Re: gadri

la .i,n cusku di'e

> {le cukta} means
> "the-thing-which-I-am-describing-as-a book", but with the
> rider that I don't feel the need to be more specific, because
> I expect you to know from the context which book I am talking
> about.  This is an alternative way of referring to previously-
> mentioned sumti, without always assigning a KOhA.

Not necessarily.  When I talk of "le cukta", the context for figuring
out which book may be extra-linguistic.  There is no reason to assume that
I have necessarily mentioned this book before.  In fact, we recently introduced
the particle "bi'u" to distinguish between old and new information:  "lebi'u
cukta" is a newly mentioned book.

> Note that this makes the specific/definite descriptions
> ambiguous.  When I use {le}, I _am_ referring to something
> specific, *but I'm not specifying it now*.  It is something
> which has been specified earlier.

Or not.  "le vi cukta" may be just "this book here in my hand" even if I
have not >mentioned< the book before -- I still expect you to figure out
from the >total situation< which book is meant.

> When I use {lo}, I am
> almost certainly immediately going to start telling you
> enough about it so that it becomes specific.

Again, perhaps not.  I may simply not care about the specifics:
"lo remna cu xekri" means "some humans are black", without any
intent to specify which.

> ("the so-called rat" - no that would be {la ratcu}),
> I don't think {le}'s the answer.

No, "la ratcu" is "something named 'Rat'".  Not quite the same.

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