| Lojban For Beginners — velcli befi la lojban. bei loi co'a cilre | ||
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| Prev | Chapter 9. Let me qualify that: internal sumti and relative clauses | Next |
Using be, you can attach the default places of a selbri to it when it acts as a sumti. But default places aren't the only places a selbri can have. We have seen in Lesson 5 that sumti tcita and tense cmavo can be used to add new sumti to a selbri. You can add these kinds of places as internal sumti, as well. This can often be useful. For example, if I wanted to say
I could tryThis letter, dated the 4th, was mailed on the 7th
But this would not work at all. A date tagged with de'i applies to the whole bridi, and can appear anywhere in that bridi. So there's no actual way of telling that either date applies to the letter specifically. (Mere position is not enough to do it in Lojban.) What we want to say is that the former date applies just to the letter, and the latter date applies to the mailing of the letter. This means that the 4th, as a date, applies only to the sumti, le xatra, and not to the entire bridi. So it is an internal sumti:le vi xatra de'i li vo cu se mrilu de'i li ze
Much better. Still not usable everywhere, though. In particular, you won't be able to attach a sumti to something like a cmene, because it won't contain a selbri. In that case, you would use pe rather than be in front of the sumti tcita.le vi xatra be de'i li vo cu se mrilu de'i li ze
Huh? Well, let's try it slower. Take fi'e: a sumti tcita meaning 'authored by' (from finti.) Now, fi'e, like by in English, tends to apply only to specific things, and not to events: you say "a book by Dickens" or "a sonata by Mozart", not "Jim went to the zoo, by Norman Mailer." (OK, you can say "Jim Went To The Zoo, by Norman Mailer" if Jim Went To The Zoo is the name of a book. But then by Norman Mailer is still attached to a thing, and not to an event.) So fi'e is almost always used as an internal sumti. This means you can say
le cukta be fi'e la dikens.
Tip: As it happens, that's the same as saying le cukta be fi la dikens. . The good thing about sumti tcita is, you can use them when you've forgotten the default places of your selbri. Which you will.
So how do I say "Oliver Twist by Dickens is very good"? I could say
But that looks kind of odd: .Oliver.tuist is not really a selbri, so it is strange to say that it actually has sumti places of its own. (As it turns out, in fact, this is considered ungrammatical in Lojban.) But if you sayla .Oliver.tuist. be fi'e la dikens. cu mutce xamgu
you aren't really committing to .Oliver.tuist being a selbri; you're merely saying that the phrase "authored by Dickens" is closely associated with the thing you're calling la .Oliver.tuist.la .Oliver.tuist. pe fi'e la dikens. cu mutce xamgu
Vocabulary
| Exercise 3 |
Translate the following sentences into Lojban. The highlighted terms are to be attached into the sentence with sumti tcita; we give you the sumti tcita you need for each sentence. You'll have to work out whether the highlighted term is an internal sumti (in which case use be or pe to link it in), or a normal sumti.
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