Young ex-presidents and abandoned houses

[selpahi]

Adjectival participles.

Lojban does not have them, but let's look at the known options for
translating phrases such as "to be a young ex-president" and "to be an
abandoned house". What these have in common is that they contain two
tanru units, at least one of which wants to be preceded by a
tense/aspect/modal. This is not grammatically possible, because
tense/aspect/modal tags apply to entire selbri and not to tanru units,
and they cannot appear in the middle of a tanru. The following
work-arounds are known to be available:

1) BE: {citno jatna be ba'o ku}, {se cliva be ba'o ku zdadi'u}
2) POI'I: {citno poi'i [ke'a] ba'o jatna kei}, {poi'i [ke'a] ba'o se
cliva kei zdadi'u}
3) ZEI: {citno ba'o-zei-jatna}, {ba'o-zei-selcliva zdadi'u}
4) lujvo, but this only works with a few tags
5) GU'E (and possibly {ke}): {gu'e citno gi ba'o jatna} (not allowed),
{gu'e ba'o se cliva gi zdadi'u} (allowed)
6) ME LO: {citno me lo ba'o jatna}, {me lo ba'o se cliva poi [ke'a]
zdadi'u} / {me lo ba'o se cliva me'u zdadi'u}

Option 1 is ugly to me because of the change in word order and the {ku}.
Option 2 is very flexible and very verbose and very complex (it
increases the nesting by one level)
Option 3 is not practical when the tanru unit consists of more than one
brivla (e.g. {se jai broda} or {na'e se broda}) as {zei} would then have
to be placed between all the words.
Option 4 is not at all general.
Option 5 has potential but requires forethought, and {gu'e} also can
claims too much, since it merges all the places, not just the x1 (just
like {je}).
Option 6 needlessly involves a sumti, which seems backwards to me,
because I believe that predicates should be the base case and sumti
should be derived from them, and not vice versa.

If tag + tanru_unit yielded a tanru_unit instead of a selbri, then
{(citno (ba'o jatna))} would be a valid tanru, as would {(ba'o se cliva
(zdadi'u))}. However, this would require a lot more {cu} everywhere,
specifically anywhere TAG was used in place of {cu} to close all the
preceding constructs.

I am looking for practical solutions to this rather commonly encountered
problem.

~~~mi'e la solpa'i

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[Bob LeChevalier]

On 11/15/2016 8:43 AM, selpahi wrote:
> Adjectival participles.
>
> Lojban does not have them, but let's look at the known options for
> translating phrases such as "to be a young ex-president" and "to be an
> abandoned house". What these have in common is that they contain two
> tanru units, at least one of which wants to be preceded by a
> tense/aspect/modal. This is not grammatically possible, because
> tense/aspect/modal tags apply to entire selbri and not to tanru units,
> and they cannot appear in the middle of a tanru. The following
> work-arounds are known to be available:

I am having trouble understanding the problem (examples)

Can you put these examples in the form of a sentence to be translated?,
and then provide the "two tanru units" you are referring to?

lojbab

[gleki.is...@gmail.com]

The problem seems to be rooted in an attempt to translate adjective and nouns using lo tanru.

In different experimental grammars that are backward compatible {citno ke be ba'o ralju jatna} is possible btw.

[guskant]

Option 2 is satisfactory to me, but you may want a simpler way for {ba'o jatna} being a tanru unit. Then I would suggest adding a new cmavo to selma'o JAI. I call it {jo'ai} here.

7) {jo'ai} in JAI: {citno jo'ai ba'o jatna}, {jo'ai ba'o se cliva zdadi'u}

{jo'ai} is in the grammatical nature of JAI, but the first place of the resulting tanru unit does not change, differently from {jai}. 

mi'e la guskant jo'au juxre glico 

[Michael Turniansky]

selpa'i,

  You failed to mention one other workaround, using an almost-equivalent bridi for the tag -- citno ke purci  jatna

   (don't know why I chose  to respond to this email.  I"m still reading email from lasst January.  Xonsider yourself special)

                --gejyspa

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[Michael Turniansky]

*brivla

[selpahi]

On 16.11.2016 16:12, Michael Turniansky wrote:
> selpa'i,
>
> You failed to mention one other workaround, using an almost-equivalent
> bridi for the tag -- citno ke purci jatna

Yeah, I noticed.

For many tags (almost all of the aspects, for example) we don't have
very good brivla. And it is questionable whether using brivla instead of
CAhA is smudra, since the tertau would be claimed even though it
shouldn't be (for {nu'o} and {ka'e}). {ka'e broda} and {cumki broda} are
not equivalent.

.i la .guskant. pu cusku di'e

> Option 2 is satisfactory to me, but you may want a simpler way for {ba'o jatna} being a tanru unit. Then I would suggest adding a new cmavo to selma'o JAI. I call it {jo'ai} here.
> 7) {jo'ai} in JAI: {citno jo'ai ba'o jatna}, {jo'ai ba'o se cliva zdadi'u}
>
> {jo'ai} is in the grammatical nature of JAI, but the first place of the resulting tanru unit does not change, differently from {jai}.

je'e .i je'a cumki je cu menre la'a lo te cuxna poi na'e mabla .i .ai
pensi ki'e do

[Jacob Thomas Errington]

> On Nov 16, 2016, at 10:27 AM, selpahi <sel...@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> For many tags (almost all of the aspects, for example) we don't have very good brivla. And it is questionable whether using brivla instead of CAhA is smudra, since the tertau would be claimed even though it shouldn't be (for {nu'o} and {ka'e}). {ka'e broda} and {cumki broda} are not equivalent.

Of course, {cumki broda} does not suggest an interpretation similar to {ka'e broda}. However, {broda cumki} *does* suggest an interpretation similar to {ka'e broda}. You can arrive at similar word order using {co}.

I agree with you that selbri should be the base case in Lojban, so why then should we be content with not having an adequate selbri for each tag? In other words, I think that the solution to this problem is to create selbri for each tag, and to use those instead of one of the workarounds given in your list.

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o