Re: 'your will' as sumti

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>]

On Wed, 5 Nov 1997, Ashley Yakeley wrote:

> coi le munje
>
> As a first examination of Lojban, I'm trying to translate the Rabelaisian
> motto 'do what you will', but I'm stumbling on the rules for sumti.

Cool -- great example to work with.

> Apparently, <<le se mukti>> means 'those actions that are motivated', is
> that correct? But I want to also specify that they're _your_
> actions/motivations, as if to put <<do>> in x3 of mukti. How do I do
> this? Apparently <<le se mukti zo'e do>> doesn't do it.

Right.  If mukti were the main verb in the sentence, you could se {se
mukti zo'e do}, but when it's inside a sumti with le, you need some way
of tacking the extra arguments on to it.  Otherwise {le se mukti} {zo'e}
and {do} separate into three arguments.  The word you need is {be} and {bei}:

    le se mukti be zo'e bei do

(be marks the first one, bei separates subsequent ones, and the optional
terminator is be'o, which I've left off here)

You can also "skip ahead" past the zo'e by using {fi}, i.e. {le se mukti
be fi do}.

> Do I need to use a relative clause here? I would then have <<ta poi se
> mukti zo'e do>> or <<ta poi zo'e muti ke'a do>>. But which of <<ti>>,
> <<ta>>, <<tu>> do I use? I can't point to these actions.

You could use a relative clause instead of {le}...{be}...{bei}...{be'o}.
The equivalent to {le} is {ro da voi}, and you don't need the be/bei/be'o
stuff.  So that would give you {ro da voi se mukti zo'e do} or {ro da voi se
mukti fi do}.  Only one syllable longer than with {le}.

> Anyway, my best
> guess is <<ko gasnu ta poi se mukti zo'e do>>, which seems rather verbose.

Except for the grammar points above, I think that's the best you're going
to get with that choice of words.  I like Lee's suggestion to use {zukte}
-- maybe even putting {do} in the x3 of zukte, if you want to stretch the
logic a little bit.

I think it must be a universal problem translating short quotes between
languages, to keep make the translation both accurate and short.

Chris