Re: a simple question...

[Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>]

la lojbab cusku di'e

> If you want the two predications to be truly 'equal' in importance, you need
> two sentences.
>
> le plise cu cpana le tanxe .ije ri cu cpana le karce

I agree, but the English original, "the apple is upon the box upon the car",
doesn't seem to be two equal predications.

> or perhaps better
> le plise cu cpana le tanxe .ije lenu go'i cu cpana le karce
> (The apple is on the box, and this event/state takes place on the car.)

This would correspond to understanding the English sentence as
"(the apple is upon the box) upon the car", which seems to me less natural
than "the apple is upon (the box upon the car)"

> But most people would use a relative clause:
>
> le plise cu cpana le tanxe noi [] cpana le karce
> The apple is on the box, which incidentally is on the car.

I would think {poi} was more likely. The one with {noi} I would translate
to English as "the apple is upon the box, which is upon the car".

"The box upon the car" seems to require a restrictive clause, but I might
well be wrong.

> The [] can be null-ellipsis, ke'a (the relative pronoun), or "le tanxe"
> (explicit).  It should not be "ri" which goes to the last COMPLETE sumti
> and le tanxe is not complete till the relative clause ends, so "ri" refers to
> "le plise".

Could you give an equally explicit rule for no'a and the vo'a, vo'e, ... series?
It would be nice that they all refer to the same level of selbri and arguments,
but from the last discussions it's not clear to me to which selbri/arguments
they refer. Is it the first selbri up from where they appear, the main selbri
of the sentence, or something else? (I'd prefer first selbri up.)

Jorge