Re: A pair of how-do-i-say-it's

[John Cowan <cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan>]

la mark. clsn. cusku di'e

> The first is the use of {cei} and the {bu'a} series....
> Here's an example of a sentence I was playing with:
>
> George Bush is to the United States what John Major is to Great Britain.
> la djordj. buc. bu'a le merko gugde .i la djan. meidjr. bu'a le brito gugde

Correct, except that ".i" needs to be ".ije", otherwise the "bu'a"s are
separate.  This is a rule that applies to "da" also.

> And some
> examples with {cei}?  Anyone have an idea?

"cei" is not really useful with the bu'a-series.  It serves as "goi" for the
broda-series, thus:

        ti slasi je mlatu cidja bo lante gacri cei broda
        .i le crino broda cu barda .i le xunre broda cu cmalu

        This is a plastic-and-(cat food) can type-of-cover, or thingy.
        The green thingy is big.  The red thingy is small.

Like "goi", "cei" is symmetrical: the broda-series word can come first or
last without change of meaning.

Here's an example of "bu'a" within a prenex, from my Hakka story:

        ro bu'a zo'u la .aniis. cu djica le nu bu'a .inaja bu'a
        for-all <pred> [if] Anyi desires the event-of <pred> then <pred>

The grammar demands that any bu'a-series variable appearing within a prenex
must be quantified, typically with "ro" or "su'o".  A bare "bu'a" is a
selbri and isn't allowed.

> The other came up in a translation I was thinking about.  We have relative
> clauses to specify sumti, but they only attach to sumti at a fairly low
> syntactic level.  So let's say I mean to say "I meet the man and the woman
> wbout whom you talked with me." (meaning you talked about *both* of them.
> And for the sake of argument, I met them separately and unrelatedly, so
> {.e} would be a reasonable conjunction).

This is a known problem which I'm working on for the next release of the
grammar.  Ideally, we should be able to say:

        *mi penmi ke le nanmu .e le ninmu ke'e poi do tavla mi ke'a

but so far I haven't been able to make that form work.

> The solution I found was with LUhI:
>
> mi penmi lu'a le nanmu .e le ninmu lu'u poi do tavla mi ke'a
> I meet the-individuals-of: the man and the woman (close-LUhI) which-are...

Yes, it works, but I agree it's ugh.  (Hmm: we need a word to transform a
UI into a selbri....)

--
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban