Conjoining Places

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!shoulson>]

Here's a feature that I think is missing from Lojban.  Whether or not we
want it there is another point altogether.

There is, to my knowledge, no way to conjoin numbered places or BAI
_phrases_ (not just BAIs) with anything other than an implied "and".

Let me explain.  We can use JA to conjoin BAI words, yielding tenses or
extended (non-numbered) places like "baijeba'i" or "baijaba'i" or whatever.
But when you have two BAI places added to a bridi (I'm dealing with this
case first, the FA's will come later), that's it: they're both assumed to
be there, almost as if they had an "and" somehow conjoining them.  Let me
try to cook up an example.

mi darxi do bai la bab. ki'u lenu do pacpre
I hit you compelled-by "bob" justified-by the-event: you are-an-evil-person

Note that I've said that I'm hitting you, _and_ I'm compelled by Bob to do
it (he forced me or whatever), _and_ it's justified by the fact that you're
an evil person.  I don't know of any way to conjoin those two places with
anything other than the implied "and".  If I had the same sumti for two
different BAIs and wanted to conjoin them with "or", let's say, I could do

mi darxi do bai ja ki'u lenu do pacpre
I hit you compelled-or-justified-by the-event: you're an evil-person.

(as if an event can compel.  I'm not dealing with the semantics here).
But here, where the BAI phrases are complete, I cannot use a disjunction or
anything with them.  If I want to say that I'm hitting you compelled by Bob
OR because you're evil (and maybe both), the best I can do (sticking to BAI
phrases as above) is:

mi ga darxi do bai la bab. gi darxi do ki'u lenu do palci
I [either/both] hit you compelled-by Bob [or/and] hit you justified-by
the-event: you're evil.

This is kinda redundant.  can something like NUhI help here?  I don't know
much about it.  Note that FAhAs have the same problem:  I stand inside the
room or above the floor:

mi sanli ne'i le kumfa gi'a sanli ga'u le loldi
I stand inside the room or stand above the floor

(leaving aside for the moment the fact that sanli has a place for
surface...)  Should there be a nicer way to put this?

This problem also shows up in the regular numbered places, but even worse.
Here, I can't even conjoin/disjoin the FA's alone!  For example, here's one
rather stilted way to say that I'm either going to or from my house:

mi litru seka'ajonaiteka'a le zdani bemi
I travel with-destination-xor-with-source the house-of-me.

I use litru because unlike klama it doesn't have source and destination
places there to confuse the issue.  But shouldn't it make sense that I
should be able to say something along the lines of:

*mi klama fejonaifi le zdani be mi
*I go/come to-xor-from the house-of-me

The above statement is patently ungrammatical, I realize.  I could do
something wimpy like "mi klama do'e le zdani", since "do'e" is the
unspecified place, but that won't help if there's room for confusion, or if
I want to use "janai" or "naja" or "ju" or some other conjunction.

And, of course, if the sumti is different, I'm in the same boat of trying
to conjoin FA _phrases_, which is just as impossible as BAI phrases. ("I am
going from Phoenix whether-or-not [I go] to Boston."  Tough to do without
duplicating the selbri (or anaphorizing/ellipsizing it))

There are likely cleaner ways to do the things I bring up using the
existing language, which of course brings up the question, "Do we want to
have these features in the language in the first place?"  I don't know.
Some of these things seem very natural to me, and maybe ought to be in the
language.  If so, how?  I don't know what would be a good mechanism to add
them  (even if we were willing to play with the grammar).  Or maybe not.
Opinions?

~mark
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Mark E. Shoulson:  shoulson@ctr.columbia.edu