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xorxes:
> la nitcion cusku di'e
[...]
> >And then,
> >you can squint, and induce a generalisation: {mi djuno lo'edu'u la
> >fred. limna}. {limna ma}? The question is invalid. You're not making a
> >claim about a particular swim, in a particular body of liquid. You're
> >generalising
>
> But it would still be a single fact, {du'u la djan ta'e limna} or
> something. I would use {le du'u} both for the fact about a
> specific event and for the (specific) fact about a generic
> event. And would use {lo'e du'u} for both. The idea is that
> for any <bridi> there is always one and only one {du'u <bridi>},
> so it makes no difference which article we use. Whichever article
> we normally use for singleton categories is the most appropriate,
> in my case it is {le}
Right. It bugs me that because it is monosyllabic you go for {le}.
It's not your choice that bugs me; it's that the choices made by
the language designers in allocating phonological shapes to cmavo
should have such an impact on what we choose to say in our Lojban
sentences.
> That is not the only possible view. It might be argued that
> {lo'i du'u <bridi>} is not necessarily always a singleton
> It depends on how the scope of {zo'e} works with respect to
> {du'u} I suppose
Indeed. But I can't think of any sufficiently strong arguments
for variable-zo'e du'u that could deserve to overturn the now long-
standing consensus in favour of fixed-zo'e du'u. Perhaps variable-
zo'e du'u = sedu'u, though.
--And.