Re: Observatives

[cowan (John Cowan)]

la djim. kartr. puzu cusku di'e:
> "A crocodile!"
> is a typical observative, in which the listener's attention is called
> to the referent set member(s) of the bare sumti.

("puzu" = "a long time earlier".)

I missed this point and only caught it
when surveying the old messages in lojban-archive (administrivia: we
do keep such an archive and can forward old messages if needed).

Lojban does not usually interpret "lo resprkrokodilo" as "A crocodile!"
The normal translation of that would be a bare selbri: "resprkrokodilo",
meaning "something-unspecified is-a-crocodile", possibly with an attitudinal
like "za'a" (I observe!) or perhaps "ii" (Fear!).

A bare sumti is normally used in reply to a sumti question with "ma":

	ma batci do le tuple .i lo resprkrokodilo
	What is biting you on the leg?  A crocodile.

--
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com		...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban