Re: all the chinese whispers

[ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

> > 1. John Le Carre _The secret pilgrim_
> >   Next day I come back to the hotel. Meetings all day long.
> >   Lot of trying to like each other. And I do, I mean they're
> >   nice chaps.
> > 2. And:
> >   Ca le lambavdei mi zilxru le xotli i taacuu ca ro donri
> >   i mutce nu troci lo dahi nu le noa ri nelci i mi gohi i zaa
> >   melpre
> {bavlamdei} has been used much more than {lambavdei}. Any reason why
> you prefer the latter?

I made it up. I don't think I have a jvoste - at least not handy.

> {zilxru} is an abomination. :)  There was consensus to make {xruti}
> agentless anyway.

If there is such a consensus, then good. Otherwise I'll use abominations
until we agree to make xruti agentless.

> {ca ro donri} means "every day", not "all day".

I thought about that a lot when I wrote it. {ca ro donri} means "during
all daytime of day zoe at place zoe". In this context, {zoe} = {koa}
(i.e. it is specific) rather than = {da}. So the desired interpretation
is "during all daytime of this day at this place".

I can readily see that my locution was misleading, but I can't yet tell
whether it would be as misleading to native se jbobau.

> Somehow that sorted itself out in the end anyway. I suppose
> {ca piro donri} would be ok, although that only says at some point
> during the day. I prefer {ca'o le donri}, which is what Don and Iain
> ended up using.

I'm still not clear about how ZAHO sumtcita shd work, but by my current
(probably wrong) understanding, {cao le donri} makes sense only as a
sumti of a selbri such as {djedi}. I see that {ca} does not mean
"throughout". For that, maybe {vie ro donri}?

As for piro, I remain unhappy about fractionators. If you insisted on
saying "the whole of", I'd prefer {rosie}, e.g. as in {vie pa rosie be
ro donri}.

> > 6. Iain:
> >   ca le bavlamdjedi mi ba sezyxruti fo le xotli
> >   .i mi ba tavla ca'o le donri
> >   .i mi certu le nu troci lenu jai zdile lo'e prenu poi gasnu da
> >   .i mi ji'a
> >   .i mi zgana lo pluka prenu
> > 7. Jorge:
> >   "I will be back from the hotel tomorrow. I will be talking all day.
> >   I'm an expert in trying to entertain people who do something in
> >   common. I do too. I observe nice people."
> I think {sezyxruti} doesn't have an x4 place: "x1 returns themself to x2
> from x3", but I assumed it was the x3 because it was the closest.
> I didn't understand the {jai} there.

Nor me. Baffling.

> Since there was nothing in the x1 it didn't matter in any case.
> I wasn't sure what to do with {da}. Is it inside the scope of {lo'e}
> or not? Is {lo'e prenu poi gasnu da} "people who do things", or
> "people such that there is something that they all do"?

[I consult the new relative clause paper....] The former, I think -
i.e. [loe [prenu poi gasnu da]]. But I despair of ever understanding
{loe}. Just when I felt we - mainly you - had pinned it down, pc
wrote, with great authority, that {loe} is a kind of averager. The
two views are not necessarily incompatible, but were nonetheless
strikingly different. I think every cmavo should have its own
dedicated apologist who has a duty to explain it, and is the final
authority on it. That would save us many terabytes of discussion.

> > Translating {le lambavdei} as "tomorrow" is a bit incautious; "the next
> > day" is safer.
> I agree, even though I did just that.
> > As I myself have said I think {noa} leads to selffeeding recursion
> > I can't complain at Goran reading it thus.
> I don't think it does. It repeats the selbri, not the whole bridi.
> The places of {no'a}, if empty, are likely to be filled like those
> in the original selbri, but not to the extent of self replication.
> Context or an explicit new sumti may override that.

So "next outer bridi" is just an unfortunate description of its
function?

I would prefer to see {noa} as meaning "is x1 sumti of lae the next outer
bridi valsi" and {se noa} as "is x2 sumti ..." etc. That avoids recursion,
but at the same time leaves less to context.

> > I can't quite see where Goran's "the participants" came from. I meant
> > "the triers".
> Well, they are the participants of the trial.
> > {le noa ri nelci} was a bit of a risk: I knew it might get taken
> > as reflexive rather than reciprocal, but I was loth to use a
> > cumbersome {soi} phrase.
> That's what {simxu} is for: {mutce nu troci le nu simnelci}.

Gah. That's not the job for a selbri. A logical language should do
reciprocals explicitly with quantifiers & variables.

---
And