John Woldemar Cowan

“ These other modal cmavo will not be further discussed here, as my purpose is to explain modal sentence connection rather than Lojbanic views of causation.)
There are four causal gismu in Lojban, distinguishing different versions of the relationships lumped in English as “causal”:
rinka: event x1 physically causes event x2 krinu: event x1 is the justification for event x2 mukti: event x1 is the (human) motive for event x2 nibli: event x1 logically entails event x2 Each of these gismu has a related modal: “ri'a”, “ki'u”, “mu'i”, and “ni'i” respectively. ”

“ In all these examples, the cmavo “cu” (belonging to selma'o CU) is used to separate the selbri from any preceding sumti. It is never absolutely necessary to use “cu”. However, providing it helps the reader or listener to locate the selbri quickly, and may make it possible to place a complex sumti just before the selbri, allowing the speaker to omit elidable terminators, possibly a whole stream of them, that would otherwise be necessary. ”

“ If the modal preceding a selbri is constructed using “fi'o”, then “fe'u” is required to prevent the main selbri and the modal selbri from colliding:
9.7) mi fi'o kanla fe'u viska do I with-eye see you. I see you with my eye (s) . There are two other uses of modals. A modal can be attached to a pair of bridi-tails that have already been connected by a logical, non-logical, or modal connection (see Chapter 14 for more on logical and non-logical connections) :
9.8) mi bai ke ge klama le zarci gi cadzu le bisli [ke'e] I under-compulsion (both go to-the market and walk on-the ice) . ”

“ Go I to Boston from Atlanta via the road using the car. In Example 3.7, the “fa” causes “mi” to occupy the x1 place, and then the following untagged sumti occupy in order the x2 through x5 places. This is the mechanism by which Lojban allows placing the selbri first while specifying a sumti for the x1 place.
Here is a more complex (and more confusing) example:
3.8) mi klama fi la .atlantas. le dargu fe la bastn. le karce I go x3= Atlanta, the road x2= Boston, the car. I go from Atlanta via the road to Boston using the car. ”

“ Like many BAI cmavo, “mau” and “me'a” are more useful when converted with “se”.
If the “ne” were omitted in Example 10.7 and Example 10.8, the modal sumti (“la meiris.” and “la betis.” respectively) would become attached to the bridi as a whole, producing a very different translation. Example 10.8 would become:
10.9) la frank. nelci la meiris. seme'a la betis. Frank likes Mary is-less-than Betty. Frank’s liking Mary is less than Betty. which compares a liking with a person, and is therefore nonsense. ”

“ For our present purposes, every selbri is assumed to have a well-known place structure. If the selbri is a brivla, the place structure can be looked up in a dictionary (or, if the brivla is a lujvo not in any dictionary, inferred from the principles of lujvo construction as explained in Chapter 12) ; if the selbri is a tanru, the place structure is the same as that of the final component in the tanru.
The stock example of a place structure is that of the gismu “klama”:
klama: x1 comes/goes to destination x2 from origin x3 via route x4 employing means of transport x5. The “x1 ... ”

“ Socrates died because Socrates is human. In Examples 7.1 through 7.4, the same English word “because” is used to translate all four modals, but the types of cause being expressed are quite different. Let us now focus on Example 7.1, and explore some variations on it.
As written, Example 7.1 claims that the plant grows, but only refers to the event of watering it in an abstraction bridi (abstractions are explained in Chapter 11) without actually making a claim. ”

“ It is grammatically permitted to tag more than one sumti with the same FA cmavo. The effect is that of making more than one claim:
3.9) [fa] la rik. fa la djein. klama [fe] le skina fe le zdani fe le zarci [x1=] Rick x1= Jane goes-to x2= the movie x2= the house x2= the office may be taken to say that both Rick and Jane go to the movie, the house, and the office, merging six claims into one. More likely, however, it will simply confuse the listener. There are better ways, involving logical connectives (explained in Chapter 14) , to say such things in Lojban. ”

“ A goer from Atlanta to Boston using the car. Here the x1 and x4 places are empty, and so no sumti are tagged with “fa” or “fo”; in addition, the x2 and x3 places appear in reverse order.
What if some sumti have FA tags and others do not? ”

“ Here the precise selbri of the relative clauses is lost: all we can tell is that the Appassionata is connected in some way with Rubinstein (in Example 10.3) and Beethoven (in Example 10.4) , and that the relationships are respectively restrictive and incidental.
It happens that both “cusku” and “finti” have BAI cmavo, namely “cu'u” and “fi'e”. We can recast Example 10.3 and Example 10.4 as:
10.5) la .apasionatas pe cu'u la .artr. rubnstain. cu se nelci mi The Appassionata expressed-by Arthur Rubinstein is-liked-by me. 10.6) la .apasionatas ne fi'e la betovn. ”

“ Entailed-by the-number n = the-number 2 + 2. n = 4 because n = 2 + 2. can be reduced to:
8.11) li ny. du li ni'igi vei re su'i re [ve'o] gi vo the-number n = the-number because ( 2 + 2 ) therefore 4. n is 2 + 2, and is thus 4. ”