John Woldemar Cowan

“ In Lojban, the term “event” is divorced from its ordinary English sense of something that happens over a short period of time. The description:
2.7) le nu mi vasxu the event-of my breathing is an event which lasts for the whole of my life (under normal circumstances) . On the other hand,
2.8) le nu la djan. cinba la djein. the event-of John kissing Jane is relatively brief by comparison (again, under normal circumstances) .
We can see from Examples 2.6 through 2.8 that ellipsis of sumti is valid in the bridi of abstraction selbri, just as in the main bridi of a sentence. ”

“ They are still closely tied to happenings in space and time. Properties, however, are much more ethereal. What is “the property of being blue”, or “the property of being a go-er”? They are what logicians call “intensions”. If John has a heart, then “the property of having a heart” is an abstract object which, when applied to John, is true. ”

“ I am tired because I jump. An event considered as something that is either happening or not happening, with sharp boundaries, is called a “state”. The abstractor “za'i” means “state-of”:
3.4) le za'i mi jmive cu ckape do The state-of (I am-alive) is-dangerous-to you. My being alive is dangerous to you. The abstractors in Examples 3.1 through 3.4 could all have been replaced by “nu”, with some loss of precision. Note that Lojban allows every sort of event to be viewed in any of these four ways:
the “state of running” begins when the runner starts and ends when the runner stops ”

“ Note that the lack of an explicit NU cmavo in a sumti can sometimes hide an implicit abstraction. In the context of Example 2.10, the appearance of “le se nelci” (“that which is liked”) is in effect an abstraction:
2.11) le se nelci cu cafne The liked-thing is-frequent. The thing which I like happens often. which in this context means
My swimming happens often. Event descriptions with “le nu” are commonly used to fill the “under conditions...” places, among others, of gismu and lujvo place structures:
2.12) la lojban. ”

“ Normally we do not think of people as events in English, but the x1 place of “cafne” is an event, and if something that does not seem to be an event is put there, the Lojbanic listener will attempt to construe it as one. (Of course, this analysis assumes that “djan.” is the name of a person, and not the name of some event.)
Logically, a counterpart of some sort is needed to “tu'a” which transposes an abstract sumti into a concrete one. This is achieved at the selbri level by the cmavo “jai” (of selma'o JAI) . This cmavo has more than one function, discussed in Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 ”

“ I know something about the one who went to the store (namely, his identity) . because the x3 place of “djuno” is the subject of knowledge, as opposed to the fact that is known. But when the questioned point is not a sumti, but (say) a logical connection, then there is no good alternative to “kau”:
8.8) mi ba zgana le du'u la djan. jikau la djordj. cu zvati le panka I [future] observe the predication-of/fact-that John [connective indirect question] George is-at the park. I will see whether John or George (or both) is at the park. ”

“ Predication/sentence abstraction The following cmavo is discussed in this section:
du'u NU predication abstraction There are some selbri which demand an entire predication as a sumti; they make claims about some predication considered as a whole. Logicians call these the “propositional attitudes”, and they include (in English) things like knowing, believing, learning, seeing, hearing, and the like. Consider the English sentence:
7.1) I know that Frank is a fool. How’s that in Lojban? Let us try:
7.2) mi djuno le nu la frank. cu bebna [kei] I know the event of Frank being a fool. ”

“ I love John more than I love George. 4.8) la djan. cu zmadu la djordj. le ka prami mi John exceeds George in the property of (X loves me) . John loves me more than George loves me. The “X” used in the glosses of Examples 4.7 through 4.8 as a place-holder cannot be represented only by ellipsis in Lojban, because ellipsis means that there must be a specific value that can fill the ellipsis, as mentioned in Section 2. Instead, the cmavo “ce'u” of selma'o KOhA is employed when an explicit sumti is wanted. ”

“ A person who says Example 8.2 is claiming to know the answer to this question. Indirect questions can occur with many other English verbs as well: I can wonder, or doubt, or see, or hear, as well as know who went to the store. ”