On 7/2/08, Michael Turniansky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> You had earlier
> asserted that you liked "vajni mutce" because it (and I'm paraphrasing
> here) required no complexity to expand it to "mutce be lo ka vajni".
Not quite. My point was that the expansion required for {mutce vajni}
is more complex than that for {vajni mutce}. I didn't say {vajni mutce}
requires no complexity.
> > What is the explicit meaning of {mutce vajni}?
> > (I mean explicit in Lojban terms, expanding the tanru.)
>
> The explicit meaning? Hmm... possibly something along the lines of
> "vajni je mutce be lo ka vajni"
Right, that's more or less what I expect. Which is more complex than
a plain {mutce be lo ka vajni}
> But that proves nothing. I would
> probably expand "barda gerku" along similar lines: "gerku je barda be
> fi le'e gerku"
Probably, yes. What about {gerku barda}, for comparison?
If we have to choose between {barda gerku} and {gerku barda}
to refer to a dog, {barda gerku} will be the clear winner, so I would
certainly agree it is better.
> I ask you -- how would you expand "blanu tsani"?
> Possibly "tsani je blanu"?
Yes.
> What about "tsani blanu"? "blanu [be]
> tai{/pa'a} le'e tsani"?
Possibly something like that, yes.
> (Notice, btw, that the expansion "blanu je
> tsani" means exactly the same as "tsani je blanu", and yet still would
> be an expansion of the former, not the latter, tanru, despite the
> order of the gismu being switched).
Yes.
> It's an established rule that the
> tanru as a whole may refer to things that are not really in either
> category of the compononent gismu (although you would be at great risk
> of loss of intelligibility),
What would be an example where a tanru does not refer to something
in the category of the tertau?
> (BTW, I notice the refgram itself (which I know you are reflexively
> iconoclastic towards, no matter what it says), in chapter 5, ex. 4.1
> uses "mutce bo barda")
I have no objection to {mutce vajni}, in fact I use such forms all the time.
My only objection is to saying that it is "better" than {vajni mutce}. They
are either both equally good or, by a criterion of simplicity, {vajni mutce}
is better. If one is to argue that {mutce vajni} is better, then I think one
should explain by what criterion it is better.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
