RE: TECH Help: some more!

[I.Alexander.bra0122@OASIS.ICL.CO.UK]

Paul Fly:
> ->The old man sighs.
> ->.i le slabu remna cu bacru le barda nu vasxu
> ->the-thing-described-as (old-person) "phonates" the-thing-described-as
> (large-breathe).

*>Everybody<* gets {slabu} wrong at least once.  It means "familiar",
not "advanced in years", which is {to'ercitno} (or {to'e citno}).

> ->I DO recognize Father Time
> ->.i mi te to'e fange zo'e la Teipatfus.
> ->I familiar-with some-property of-Father-Time
>         -> is {to'e} right?

This _used_ to be ungrammatical - you had to say {to'e te fange} -
but the latest grammar allows it.  It just looks a little strange
to those of us who're used to the other form.

> These were sentences I picked semi-randomly out of a file.  The emphasis
> on "DO", in english, seems to imply that one might think otherwise, but
> I left that out.  But "recognize", I had a tough time with that, and
> "familiar with some property" doesn't quite do it.  Not to mention the
> lojban!  Is {to'e} supposed to be used this way?

The {to'e}'s fine, but I'd be inclined to use {se slabu} for
"familiar-with".  And for "recognise", perhaps something like
{traju'o}, {tarmi djuno}.

>  And then there is
> "Father Time", which I tried to make into a tanru, would it be better to
> just lojab-ize the sound of it?  Nah, that doesn't seem right.  Other<NL>
> than those things, this seems right...

I'd be inclined to use the tanru as-is - {la temci patfu}.  Various
things can follow a {la}, including a selbri.

> ->When I figure it out, I'll let you know.
> ->.igo mi jimpe roda de gi mi skicu de do
> ->if-and-only-if I understand all-x-about y, then, I describe y to you.
>         ->Nope, this says that whenver I understand all facts about some
>           things, then I describe that thing to you.  Not right... maybe:
> ->.igo mi jimpe da ti gi mi skicu ti do
> ->if-and-only-if I understand something about this, then, I will describe
>   this to you.
>         ->better...

> Two tries on this, the first I left in for the hell of it, there it is.
> My forethought connectives made people smile, it seemed.  Are afterthought
> connectives more the norm?  Forethoughts seem closer to english.  Otherwise,
> this seems okay to me...

Translating "it" isn't always easy, particularly when, as here, it's
out of context.  All sorts of things could be right, including your {ti}.
I tend to use {ko'a}, but it could easily be something like {di'u},
in context.

"Figure it out" seems to want to say "come to an understanding of it",
rather than just "understand it", but I'm not sure how best to express
that.  {mo'u} might do it, although that suggest you've _finished_
understanding it.  "Understanding" doesn't seem to fit the usual
sort of event contours very well.  Perhaps you want to work in
{kanji} somewhere, e.g. {mo'u jimpe kanji}.  And I would have thought
that the {roda} in you're first attempt is probably closer to the truth
than {da}, although either's an approximation.

I'm not sure about your {go ... gi ... }.  I'd probably just say
{ca lenu}.

"I'll let you know", sounds to me more like "I'll tell you I've done so",
rather than "I'll describe it to you".

So putting it all together, I come to something like

        ca lenu mi mo'u kanji co jimpe so'ada ko'a kei
        mi cusku fi do fe le se du'u go'i

(No, I'm not 100% sure I can use {go'i} like that.)

Not an easy one, particularly because it's so colloquial, so there's
a good chance someone else will disagree with me somewhere.

> ->"We have a few moments to spare before they reach the cliff", my brother
>   mutters.
> ->.i lu mi ponse nu temci lenu cabna ko'a klama le cmana balni li'u se smaji
>   cusku lemi bruna
> ->"We own-time-between the-event: now and [they come-to the mountain-ledge]",

>   quietly-says my-brother.

> And this mess.  I still don't grok clauses, and how to deal with them.  The
> cmavo-file I have gives only tiny explainations... not enough to go on...
> Then there are the tanru.  I don't know, is it close in any way?  What would
> be a better way?

First of all, let's check out the grammar.  If you haven't already, get hold
of the "Diagrammed Summary" of the grammar.  That has excellent discussions of
all the commonest constructions, including_descriptions_ such as {le <selbri>}
and _abstractions_ such as {nu <selbri>}.

The x2 place of {ponse} needs to be filled by a <sumti>, and your {nu temci}
is a <selbri> meaning "x1 is-the-event-that [something]
is-the-period-of-time from x2 to x3".  We'll come back to the details of
this in a minute, but to turn a selbri into a sumti, you need to use one
of the gadri such as {le}.  {le <selbri>} describes something which is
suitable to fill the x1 place of the <selbri>.  {le nu temci} means
"the-event-that [something] is-the-period-of-time from x2 to x3".

Similarly with the x2 and x3 places of {temci}.  {lenu cabna} is grammatically
correct for x2, but then you've got a whole bridi
({ko'a klama le cmana balni}).  That needs to be encapsulated as a unit
using an abstraction, in this case {nu}, and then turned into a sumti
as before giving {lenu ko'a klama le cmana balni}, meaning "the event-that
they go [to] the mountain ledge".

So far, that gives us

        .i lu mi ponse lenu temci lenu cabna lenu ko'a klama le cmana balni li'u
        se smaji cusku lemi bruna

The {se} in {se smaji cusku} is in the wrong place.  Although the final
place structure of a tanru is that of its final component, the individual
brivla can each be converted using selma'o SE.  Let's see if I can give
a concrete examples - this might seem a bit contrived, but I'll do my
best.  Let's say you're at some sort of exhibition, {lo nu jarco}.
{le jarco} are the exhibitors, {le se jarco} are the things being
exhibited, and {le te jarco} are the audience.  You're going to
count them all ({kancu}), and the count you end up with is {le te kancu}.
The number of exhibitors is {le jarco te kancu}, the number of exhibits
is {le se jarco te kancu}, and the size of the audience is
{le te jarco te kancu}.  {le se smaji} is the observation point from
which something is quiet - a quiet place, and {le cusku} is someone
who expresses something - an expresser, so you're {se smaji cusku}
means "x1 [is-a] quiet-place [kind-of] expresser [of] x2", whereas
{smaji se cusku} means "x1 [is-a] quiet [kind-of] thing-expressed-by x2",
which is what you want.

>From now on things are going to get more subtle and less clear cut.

Back to {temci}.  "x1 is-the-period-of-time [from] x2 to x3".
I think we want to say a bit more about this period, i.e. that
it consists of "a few moments".  Something like

        li so'u se snidu                             le  temci
        A-few   is-the-number-of-seconds-duration-of the period-of-time

        be     le                     cabna          bei  le  nu
        [from] the-thing-described-as in-the-present [to] the event-that

        ko'a klama   le  cmana    korbi
        they go [to] the mountain edge.

I'm inclined to prefer {korbi} to {balni}.
I've also taken the {nu} out of {lenu cabna}, because I don't think
it's necessary or useful (you could probably elide it altogether, using
{befilenu ko'a klama li'o}).  The {be} and {bei} are just bits of syntactic
glue which bind the sumti into the {le temci} description - this is
sometimes more appropriate than encapsulation in an abstraction.

As it stands this doesn't get the "we have" into the picture.  You could
do without it altogether, since it doesn't really add a great deal
to the meaning.  You could wrap the whole thing up in a big {lenu} and
stick to your original {mi ponse}, but I don't think this works very
well semantically.  You could add something like {sera'a mi} as an
extra term to the {se snidu} bridi, or add {mi zo'u} as a prenex.
Or you could turn the whole thing round a bit and say

        mi ponse   lo            snidu               beli so'u poi
        We possess that-which-is seconds-in-duration a-few     which

    temci                 fi   le  nu         ko'a klama   le  cmana    korbi
        is-the-period-of-time [to] the event-that they go [to] the mountain
 ledge.

I'm never very sure about this plural use of {mi}, when there are
all the other KOhA like {mi'o} around, but I've seen other people
use it, and number is optional in most Lojban constructs, so it's
probably OK.

I've felt all the way through that {ponse} was a bit strong,
but by the time I got to this last version, I couldn't think
of anything better, unless its {se zasti}(?).

Oh, and you could also use something like {pu'o lenu} ("until the
event-that") instead of {temci}, which would give

        mi ponse lo snidu beli so'u beipu'o lenu ko'a klama le cmana korbi

co'omi'e .i,n.