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Re: Gzarondan vindicated.

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Thursday, September 30, 2004, 16:05
Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon) scripsit:

> In English you can say "the dog's master" as easily as "the man's dog" > but Gzarondan is a little more strict about the hierarchy of > possession when there is one. Of course, not everything is possible in > English - you can say "the book's cover" but I would be very surprised > to hear "the cover's book". That said, I daresay that there are > dialects of Gzarondan in which the retropossessive is not used.
In Lojban, the possessive relations (there are three: weak, strong, and inalienable) are fully reversible: "the cover's book" is just as perspicuous as "the book's cover" (and could be expressed by the strong possessive, since books don't normally have multiple covers nor vice versa). If you saw my arm and wondered whose it was, someone could tell you la djan. du ta po'e le birku John is that-one of:inalienable the arm thus classifying me as inalienably posessed by my arm instead of vice versa. -- Yes, chili in the eye is bad, but so is your John Cowan ear. However, I would suggest you wash your jcowan@reutershealth.com hands thoroughly before going to the toilet. http://www.reutershealth.com --gadicath http://www.ccil.org/~cowan