The Koan of Apple Desires
September 5, 2021
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lojban conlangs
Be prepared to appreciate what you meet.
mi djica lo plise Let us consider the English sentence I want an apple.
Respectively, nu ponse lo plise, nu catlu lo plise, and nu citka lo plise If you think about it, it is totally nonsensical. Why? Well, you cannot desire objects. You can only really desire events. When you say I want an apple. you are really saying that you want an event related to or concerning the apple. Perhaps you want to own the apple, or look at the apple, or eat the apple. To translate the vagueness of English I want an apple. into Lojban while not assuming any further information, we might say something like djica lo nu lo plise cu co'e zo'e is to co'e what da is to broda. It’s an elliptical selbri. .
To shorten this, Lojban has tu'a. It’s an abbreviation.
su'u is the most general member of selma’o NU and can represent any of them.
tu'a X == lo su'u X co'e
where X is a sumti
Our new and improved sentence is djica tu'a lo plise.
What’s this jai I keep hearing everywhere?
jai is weird. jai attaches to selbri rather than sumti. It causes the first place of the selbri to be wrapped in an abstraction.
jai broda == tu'a zo'e broda == lo su'u zo'e co'e cu broda
It is often used in lieu of tu'a. Since members of selma’o LE extract the x1 place of selbri, by turning the x1 place of the enclosed selbri into an abstraction, jai achieves the same effect as tu'a.
lo jai broda == tu'a lo broda
.i .ui ko zmadu cilre tu’a lo jbobau