Internal sumti tcita

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

This letter, dated the 4th, was mailed on the 7th

I could try

le vi xatra de'i li vo cu se mrilu de'i li ze

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 be 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.

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

la .Oliver.tuist. be fi'e la dikens. cu mutce xamgu

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 say

la .Oliver.tuist. pe 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.

Vocabulary

kakne 

x1 is able to do/be/capable of doing/being x2 (event/state) under conditions x3 (event/state)

lidne 

x1 precedes/leads x2 in sequence x3; x1 is former/preceding/previous; x2 is latter/following

pluja 

x1 is complex/complicated/involved in aspect/property x2 (ka) by standard x3

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.

  1. I mail you in Lojban (bau: in language..., from bangu 'language')

  2. I give you a book in Lojban (bau: in language..., from bangu 'language')

  3. According to Jyoti, Ranjeet is foolish (cu'u: as said by..., from cusku 'express')

  4. So named by Susan, 'Chemistry Irritant' drinks German beer (te me'e: as a name used by..., from te cmene 'name')

  5. Names in Lojban are preceded by 'la' (se pa'u: as a part of..., from se pagbu 'have as a part'. There's a trick to the quotation here (and you do need to use a quotation); check Lesson 7 again...)

  6. City roads are very complicated; for example, Ranjeet cannot go to the Pakistani restaurant (mu'u: exemplified by..., from mupli 'example')