Re: 'Observative' - terminology

[Colin Fine <C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK>]

Lojbab on one of the uses of the (syntactic) observative:
-------------------------
- it is one of a few sentences where I have picked up net.lojban.usage, though
I think it malglico.  The most obvious of these is "cumki fa ..." for
"it is possible that ...".  I'm not sure why people including myself seem to fe
feel comfortable with such reversal, especiallly since we do it only with
certain words that do so in English  - in general I feel very UN-comfortable
when using a form that is recognizably patterned after an Englishj usage, but
where I can't say why I am doing it in a non-typical Lojban manner.  It is
perhaps possible that what we want is to make the Lojban word "selcumki"
simply so we can comfortably use the Engl;ish usage as an observative, even
though selcumki may not have a legit English translation.
--------------------------

This form is more generally motivated than a few English words, though it is
certainly not universal in the world's languages. Chomsky described a
transformation called something like Heavy Clause Shift, whereby a single
long and complex clause is moved to the end of a sentence.  As far as I
know he was mainly thinking of English, but you certainly get parallel
structures in other Western European languages, at least.

Some people have used "se cumki" rather than "cumki fa" . I (and others)
have preferred the latter. Why?

I think it is for this reason:
        se cumki lenu dai
means
        zo'e se cumki lenu dai
i.e. there is a fronted (hence emphasised) x2, even though it is then
omitted. This suggests a true observative: "Lo conditions [hold] under
which ...."

But
        cumki falenu dai
means
        cumki falenu dai kei [fe] zo'e
i.e. the x2 is not fronted. So while it is still there, it is not emphasised.

This distinction is real for me, and explains my preference. I am not sure
whether it is a legitimate interpretation or not.
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