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Two queries



Hey.

I have a pair of little questions for you all.  One's semantic, and one's
stylistic, so I'm giving the grammar a break.

Semantic:  We all know that {ke'a} in a subordinate clause refers back to
the sumti being described/restricted.  What if you have nested subordinate
clauses and want to use the outer {ke'a} in the inner clause?  I mean like:

mi catlu le nanmu poi do pu tavla le ninmu poi [ke'a] prami ke'a

The first {ke'a} might be ellipsizable, and maybe this isn't the best
example, but I think you can see the problem.  Just saying that {ke'a} is
always the innermost one is not a good answer, I think.  Sometimes you want
to lower it one further down.  I suspect the best answer is simply to use
subscripting:  {ke'axipa} is innermost or just {ke'a}, the next one out is
{ke'axire} and so on.  This sound good?  Already suggested?

Stylistics:  I know that stylistics aren't really done for Lojban yet, but
I wanted to ask around on this anyway (listen up, O Nick!).  We have the SE
conversion for selbri.  As the book mentions, something like {sevete
BRIVLA} is legal, but mega-confusing.  Basically, you wouldn't want to use
more that one SE at a time.  I propose that multiple SE be acceptable (yes,
I know it needn't be a proposition), under a particular circumstance:  that
it be of form {setese}.  That is, one conversion, then another, then the
first again.  This amounts to swapping any two places (not just one with
first), and the places are easily identifiable.  I think this can make
things much easier for word-order, and really isn't too tough to follow.
Anyone think this is hideous?

~mark