Connecting clauses and serial verbs: How best to translate "Come and take them"

[volcpitar]

Coi ro do mi’e lo di’a nintadni be la lojban. be’u no’u la volcpitar

.i a’o mi bau drani cusku dei .i pe’u ko se va’u mi draga’igau lo se srera pe dei.

Greetings all!  I am a repeat new student of Lojban going by the name of Volcpitar.  I hope I am saying these sentences correctly from a linguistic point of view and would appreciate any corrections.

I have just been finishing my review of the CLL and the list of gismu and have a few questions regarding how to connect clauses.  In the back of my mind, I am thinking about languages that use serial verbs or an equivalent to express stages of an action and am wondering how these should come across in Lojban.

To take a concrete example, how could you translate μολὼν λαβέ (molṑn labé) (Come and take them!), the Spartans’ famous response to the Persians’ demand to lay down their arms and surrender at the battle of Thermopylae?

Although English can use a connective, clearly the meaning is really “come to take them!” and involves a single activity rather than two separate ones.   How could I handle this succinctly  in Lojban?

A related question is how would I just say: “Come here”?  My first guess would be “ko vi klama,”  but wouldn’t that imply that the entire movement described by the selbri--i.e., the entire route-- is close by, rather than just the destination?

Given the context, the best I can come up with for “Come and take them” is

--{.i ko te ka’a vi lebna

Or perhaps:

--{.i ko ve ka’a ti lebna

As for “come here,” the only solution I can find is

--{i. ko ti klama

Using “ti” as a translation of “here” is a usage that appears in the CLL, but I have never quite been sure about using it to indicate a vague undelimited place.

.i xu lo zi xelvanva be fu mi cu gendra ja smudra .i xu zasti fa lo se cu’u xagmau be de’u

Are my translations above syntactically and/or semantically correct?  Are there other better ways to express them?

By the way, I tried to edit my original post, but couldn't figure out how to do it and ended up deleting it. Sorry for any inconvenience

mu’o

[Pierre Abbat]

On Friday, 16 February 2018 14.24.50 EST volcpitar wrote:
> Coi ro do mi’e lo di’a nintadni be la lojban. be’u no’u la volcpitar
>
> .i a’o mi bau drani cusku dei .i pe’u ko se va’u mi draga’igau lo se srera
> pe dei.
>
> Greetings all! I am a repeat new student of Lojban going by the name of
> Volcpitar. I hope I am saying these sentences correctly from a linguistic
> point of view and would appreciate any corrections.

"be'u" should be "be'o". "mi bau drani cusku" means "I say correctly in
(unspecified language)"; I think you want "mi banske drani cusku".

> I have just been finishing my review of the CLL and the list of gismu and
> have a few questions regarding how to connect clauses. In the back of my
> mind, I am thinking about languages that use serial verbs or an equivalent
> to express stages of an action and am wondering how these should come
> across in Lojban.
>
> To take a concrete example, how could you translate μολὼν λαβέ (molṑn labé)
> (Come and take them!), the Spartans’ famous response to the Persians’
> demand to lay down their arms and surrender at the battle of Thermopylae?
>
> Although English can use a connective, clearly the meaning is really “come
> to take them!” and involves a single activity rather than two separate
> ones. How could I handle this succinctly in Lojban?

I'd say the complete sentence is "ko klama be ti be'o lebna ti"; shorter
versions are "ko klama lebna ti" and "ko klama be ti lebna".

> A related question is how would I just say: “Come here”? My first guess
> would be “ko vi klama,” but wouldn’t that imply that the entire movement
> described by the selbri--i.e., the entire route-- is close by, rather than
> just the destination?

"ko klama ti" is correct. You could also say "ko mo'ibu'u klama", but "mo'ivi"
is ungrammatical according to jbofi'e.

> By the way, I tried to edit my original post, but couldn't figure out how
> to do it and ended up deleting it. Sorry for any inconvenience

You can't edit or delete an email once you've sent it.

Pierre
--
Jews use a lunisolar calendar; Muslims use a solely lunar calendar.

[Gleki Arxokuna]

Em sexta-feira, 16 de fevereiro de 2018 22:24:50 UTC+3, volcpitar escreveu:

To take a concrete example, how could you translate μολὼν λαβέ (molṑn labé) (Come and take them!), the Spartans’ famous response to the Persians’ demand to lay down their arms and surrender at the battle of Thermopylae?

μολὼν is an Ancient Greek aorist active participle.

I'm afraid Ancient Greek aorist is poorly translated into English. One just need to study Ancient Greek to get a grasp of what aorist means there. Aorist, perfective, telic are infamous examples of "you can't do that in English" and a frequent source of confusion for English-speaking Lojbanists (as if we had other kinds of them).

The best renderings in Lojban I can come up with are

[from more precise to less and less correct]

{me lo poi mo'u klama vau lebna fa ko} (participle retained, {mo'u} is chosen to render telicity, see this)

{klama be co'i lebna fa ko} (participle simplified into a seltau, aspect changed from achievative to perfective)

{ca le nu vo'a co'i klama vau ko lebna} (participle transformed into an adverbial clause)

{ko co'i klama gi'e lebna} (participle moved into a separate main verb)