Re: TECH: query re. selcmavo NU

[Mr Andrew Rosta <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

John Cowan writes:
> Actually, "mi prenu" does not >refer< to anything except you yourself.
> It >asserts< or >claims< that you are a person, but in no way >refers<
> to any person-event or person-quality.

Does Lojban semantics specify a default modality? I had assumed that
"mi prenu" refers to (i.e. invokes a concept of) me being a person,
and the default conventions of discourse in most contexts treat this
as being a claim about how the world actually is - i.e. the claim
is that there is a real analogue of the invoked concept.

> > So, can I say, in order to disambiguate, something like:
> >
> >    mi nu prenu  "there exists the event of my being a person"
>
> This means "I am an event of (someone's) being a person."
>
> >    mi ka prenu  "there exists my personhood"
>
> And this means "I am a quality of (someone's) being a person."
>
> Presumably both these statements are false, since you are neither an event
> nor a quality.

I am an event in the Lojban sense - I have duration, and can be
located in time. So "mi nu prenu" would seem to be true, and,
for that matter, the "nu" seems redundant, since every person
is an event.

> To express what you want, say:
>
>         da nu/ka mi prenu
>         There-exists-X-such-that-X is-an-event/quality-of (me being-a-person)

Maybe the example is confusing, since the event of me being me is
coextensive with the event of me being a person. So let's change
it to "mi bebna" - "I am a fool" (I am assuming for the sake
of argument that I shall acquire sagacity in my old age). but still,
all of the following seem equivalent to me:
   mi bebna
   mi nu bebna
   da nu mi bebna

-----
coho mihe laho .o. And .o.