Re: TECH: QUERY re cmene

[John Cowan <cowan@SNARK.THYRSUS.COM>]

la kartr. djim. cusku di'e

> How do you recognize "name context"?  I  notice the <BAI> "me'e".  I
> would say that this is the "name tense", e.g.
>
>         ko'a me'e tirxu
>         [He] is Tiger

Nope.  "me'e" means "me'e zo'e", i.e. "associated-with-name something-unspec".
So "ko'a me'e tirxu" means "It1 is a tiger who has a name", but the name
isn't given.  There is no "name tense", in the sense of "BAI or similar
cmavo which changes a predicate to a name predicate".  To make a description
into a name-argument, use "la"; to make a name-argument into a predicate,
use "me".

> Then I would interpret "la" as an abbreviation for "le me'e", e.g.
>
>         la tirxu == le me'e tirxu

More like:

        le se cmene lu tirxu li'u
        that-described-as-something named [quote] tiger [unquote]

In fact, every use of names can be transformed so that the names appear
only in quotations.

--
John Cowan      cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban.