so'o te fanva befi la kolin. fain.

[cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!nsn]

Nice translations, although some of your choices of wording bewildered me
(like {krasi}). When linking two sentences by a BAI, you use {bo}, not {ku}:
{.isemu'ibo}, not {.isemu'iku}, which means {semu'i zo'e}

>1) Dialogue.  I want a way to present a dialogue like this, with two (or
>more) participants, without having to 'lu ... li'u' everything. Is there
>a set of metalinguistic operators you can drop into a quoted text to
>switch between speakers like that?

You could use {mu'o} (or whatever the COI word for "over!" is.

>2) Rhetorical. I wanted Richard to echo 'semu'ima' (why?), to express his
>feelings on it, without actually asking the question

{ma paunai} or {ma pause'i} are the clumsier ways of doing it; also {zo'e
kaunai}

>3) Topicalisation (This did not come up in the passages, but I thought
>about it when composing them, and thinking about translating Japanese).

Use of the prenex: terms (sumti), followed by {zo'u}, followed by the
main sentence. Seen from time to time in LeChevalier's usage.

>        Eki       wa    iya    desu    ne
>        Station topic horrible is/are qu-tag
>        "The station is horrible, isn't it?"
>(more literally, "As for the station, horrible, isn't it?")

le denpyklo zo'u xlali xu

Also BAI-word {ra'a} will do the trick.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Nick Nicholas, Melbourne Uni, Australia.  nsn@{munagin.ee|mullauna.cs}.mu.oz.au
"Despite millions of dollars of research, death continues to be this nation's
number one killer"      - Henry Gibson, Kentucky Fried Movie
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