Re: self-descriptions?

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>]

>Chris:
>> >[Lojbab:
>> >> Fine, use brivla.  Tenses apply to whole bridi.
>> >This is a pretty ugly solution: {citno bao kei bao ralju}, or
>> >{citno me kei bao ralju}, or {citno zio kei bao ralju} - they're
>> >all ugly. Semantically, ZAhO works quasitanruishly, like NAhE,
>> >so I think it oughtn't to apply to whole bridi.]
>> Are those even grammatical?
>
>As far as I know they are.

I can't even guess what you're trying to do.  {kei} is a close-bracket for
selma'o NU, which you never use in your three "ugly solutions".  Maybe
you've made a typo or something and I'm just not seeing what you meant...?

>> I think he meant something like {selfanmo citno ke ralju} and
>> {selfanmo ke citno ralju}.
>
>That's irksome, because every ZAhO must be duplicated by a lujvo,
>just because ZAhO has the wrong syntax. And moreover, these
>examples would give true tanru, whereas ZAhO, like NAhE, are
>more rule governed semantically than true tanru.

:-) I didn't say it wasn't irksome; I just guessed that's what he meant.  I
agree it would be nice to put ZAhO inside tanru, although I'm not sure if
doing that would break anything else...

>> Or you ought to be able to use zei: {citno ba'o zei ralju} or {ba'o zei
>> citno ralju}.
>
>The second is "president who is no longer young". How to get "person
>who is no longer a young president"?

hm.... you can't do {ba'o zei ke citno ralju}, can you?

>> Yes. fi-fai-fo-fum are very much like cases, but the fo-ative case
>> doesn't have a generic meaning outside a particular selbri. Maybe the
>> fa-ative tends to be nominative and the feative is accusative, but by
>> the time you're at the 3rd or 4th place the meaning is completely
>> context-dependent.
>
>But why is this harder than usage without FA (i.e. in normal
>x1, x2, x3 ... order)?

FA-scrambling requires more syllables than normal order, so normal order is
favored by the syntax.  So naturally lazy syllable-hating lojbanis will use
normal order more often, and be more used to hearing it.  Listening to
language structures you are used to is easier than unfamiliar ones, and the
normal order will be the most familiar vau ba'a.

                     ____
 Chris Bogart        \  /  http://www.quetzal.com
 Boulder, CO          \/   cbogart@quetzal.com