Also "ca" here should be "pu".
[pu lo nu mi klama lo zdani vau] do pinxe lo tcati [ri'a lo nu do
taske]
In this Lojban sentence, the main bridi is {do pinxe lo tcati} (=
"You drink tea"), and the sentence contains also two adverbial
phrases, the one that begin with {pu} ("before"), and the one that
begin with {ri'a} ("caused by").
In Lojban, adverbials and quantifiers have a rightward logical
scope, so they apply to the bridi they are in, as well as any other
adverbial or quantifier appearing on their *right*, but they
are under the logical scope of any adverbial or quantifier appearing
on their *left*. Therefore, the relative order of appearance
of adverbials matters when interpreting a Lojban sentence containing
more than one of those.
In this case, the temporal information {pu lo nu mi klama lo zdani
vau} (= "before I go home") comes first, so it applies to everything
on its right, including the causal information {ri'a lo nu do taske}
(= "because you are/were thirsty"). The causal information only
applies to the main bridi {do pinxe lo tcati}, and it is under the
scope of "before I go home".
The whole sentence translates as "Before I go/went home, [you drank
tea because you were thirsty]", or "[your drinking tea caused by
thirst] occurred before I go/went home".
The importance of the relative order of appearance of adverbials is
more obvious in the following examples:
• {ki'u lo nu carvi ku na ku mi klama lo panka} = "Because of
rain, I don't go to the park."
• {na ku ki'u lo nu carvi ku mi klama lo panka} = "It is not the
case that I go to the park because of rain." (So maybe I go to the
park for another reason.)
• {mi na ka'e lafti lo tanxe} = "I can't lift the box", "It is not
the case that I can lift the box".
• {mi ka'e na lafti lo tanxe} = "It is possible that I do/did/will
not lift the box", "maybe I do/did/will not lift the box".
I hope this helped.
—Ilmen.