| Lojban For Beginners — velcli befi la lojban. bei loi co'a cilre | ||
|---|---|---|
| Prev | Chapter 5. Times, days, dates (and abstractions) | Next |
If we want to give the time of an event, rather than just tell the time, we need to fill in some more places. The second place of tcika is 'state/event': people don't have times — events have times. So we need some way to show that the sumti in this position is a state or an event, and not a thing. But
won't work; it does not mean "Ten o'clock is the time that I go" (or come!), but "Ten o'clock is the time of my goer," which is meaningless.la daucac. tcika le mi klama
We get round this problem with the word nu, which means — you guessed it — 'state/event'. This is called an abstraction descriptor (or abstractor for short), other common descriptors being ka (quality or property), ni (amount) and so on (for a complete list, see The Complete Lojban Language, p. 269). What nu does here is allow us to put a whole bridi into a selbri place, and by extension (if we put an article in front of it) a sumti place. The sequence goes a little like this:
Robin celebrates
Logfest is an event such that Robin celebrates — Logfest is Robin's celebration/celebrating
I like the event such that Robin celebrates — I like Robin's celebration/Robin celebrating
When used to introduce a sumti, nu is usually written together with the article (le or lo), but is actually a separate word. So what we want is
(note that there is no cu here, since la daucac. is a cmene)la daucac. tcika lenu mi klama
| Exercise 2 |
What do these Lojban sentences mean?
|