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On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 10:26 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote: > Jorge Llambías, On 07/09/2012 01:19: > > > I'm now wondering whether vV shouldn't be just "ne". Does the V play > > any relevant role? > > la je ckfa va mlka prfraka'a > I prefer my coffee milky (to not milky) > > la je ckfa ne mlka prfraka'a > I prefer it when coffee is indeed milky to when coffee is not indeed milky How do you get "prefer it when" from that? You have prfr_a_, and a is ckfa and also (mlka rather than not). I don't see how "ne" introduces an "it when" reading. > I think the ne only pragmatically gets across that the focus is the > milkiness. But that objection goes away with: > > la ckfa li fi (ne) mlka prfrika'a > > where even without "ne", you get the required interp. > > But I can't see a way of doing without vA with the quantifier-predicates: > > > la je frmra se xsle je pnsake va drxake msta > la msta je frmra se xsle je pnsake va drxake > > Can you think of a vV-less method? Just la je frmra se xsle je pnsake ne drxake msta la msta je frmra se xsle je pnsake ne drxake A being a farmer and owning some donkey and rather beating it than not is the most frequent case for A. If va works there, ne does the exact same thing. The connection between the a of msta and the a of drxake doesn't need to be mediated by va, and "ne" by itself is enough to indicate that the comparison is between "ni drxake" and "na/nu drxake". > You can't do it as: > li frmra si je xsle pnsaki lu fu drxaki mstu > > To summarize, then: vA is indispensable for certain logical structures > (donkey sentences), and is also convenient for other quantifier-predicates > and for marking focus within semantically comparative predicates such as > 'prefer'. But I still don't see what the vowel in vA adds to the donkey sentence. ma'a xrxe