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a gadri which will solve all our box/doctor/unicorn-wanting problems (was Re: [jboske] Needed boxes)



On Tue, Dec 31, 2002 at 03:29:01PM +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:
> la lojbab cusku di'e
> > >    mi nitcu lo'e tanxe le du'u setca lei vi cukta ty
> > >    I need a box to put these books in.
> >
> >mi nitcu fi lenu setca lei vi cukta ce'u poi tanxe (vo'e? depending on what
> >it means these days, or maybe ri to avoid the question)
> >
> >which might back-translate as
> >I need that these books be inserted into something which will box them.
> >in case I've mangled things unrecognizably.
> 
> And what goes in x2 of nitcu? What do you answer to {go'i ma}?

He could currently do a "tu'a lo tanxe" thing in x2.  But you're
ignoring his "le" on the "nu", which makes no sense---it's pretty
difficult to refer specifically to future events, especially if you
don't even have a box yet.  So why le?  We keep hitting these all
over the place (cf. *mi djica lenu mi citka).

So, how about add an eliptical gadri?  "lai'u" or some such.  The
meaning is zi'o-style for gadri---it means we don't feel like putting
a gadri here, but we have to.  So:

        A: mi nitcu fi lai'u nu setca lei vi cukta lo vo'e
        B: go'i ma
        A: "tu'a lo tanxe" or "lai'u tanxe"

I think this is what people have been trying to do with "tu'o tanxe",
but "tu'o tanxe" is just a kind of "lo tanxe" (neccesarily we can
deduce "su'ono lo tanxe" from it, which is not what people claim
tu'o-as-gadri means).  And how do you say "I need two boxes" with
this tu'o stuff?  It's easy with lai'u:

        mi nitcu lai'u re tanxe
        (for this we can still do "mi nitcu tu'a re tanxe" anyway, btw)

djica of things which may or may not exist would use this:

        A: *mi djica lenu mi klama le zdani
        B: le ki'a nu do klama le zdani
        A: .y. mi bebna .i mi tavla fi lo fasnu poi na fasnu .i mi
        na'eka'e klama le zdani mu'i leza'i le mamta cu citka le
        karce po mi .i .oi.u'u

Instead:
        A: mi djica lai'u nu mi klama le zdani

We could even give this a better definition than "eliptical gadri":
as araizen was saying about what (he wishes) tu'o does, it absorbs
stuff as if it were part of the predicate, but with more precision
than normal tanru because you specified a place which was relevant.
So

        mi djica lai'u nu mi klama le zdani ==ish
        mi nu klama le zdani kei djica

        mi nitcu lai'u tanxe ==ish
        mi tanxe nitcu

etc.

The only downside is that it would be nice if it were shorter.

-- 
Jordan DeLong - fracture@hidden.email
lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u
                                     sei la mark. tuen. cusku

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