History: I like you being beaten by me

Source of version: 2 (current)

[[Originally from ((ce'u)) ] The issue here is how to represent the difference between "I like beating you" and "I like you being beaten by me". As we join our story in progress, ((nitcion)) thought there was an analogy between that distinction and the distinction made between "the quality of beating you" (''le ka ce'u jinga do'') and "the quality of being beaten by me" (''le ka mi jinga ce'u''). *If I like beating you at chess, it might be that I don't like it so much that I win, but that you lose. That to me sounds like ''mi nelci lesu'u mi jinga fi do no'u ce'u'', as distinct from ''mi nelci lesu'u mi no'u ce'u jinga fi do''. **Why not ''mi nelci le nu mi jinga fi ba'e do'' vs ''mi nelci le nu ba'e mi jinga fi do'', or following Cowan: ''mi nelci le nu mi jinga fi dokau'' vs ''mi nelci le nu mikau jinga fi do''. ''or "mi nelci le nu le te jinga zo'u mi jinga fi do"'' ***If ''ba'e'' could do the job, it'd be doing the job of ''ce'u'' everywhere else, too. ****Not really. I have trouble understanding how a property fits in a bridi when the holder of the property is not one of the other arguments. *****Although I have publically repudiated the error of my ways, this is still a bogus solution: ''I like it that you're being beaten by ME''. Even if this is merely a difference in discourse focus, it is crude to emulate such focus with ''ba'e''. I'd sooner do it with ''bi'u''. ***If ''kau'' can do the job, then I have a hard time seeing what the difference is between ''dakau'' and ''ce'u''. ****There's plenty of examples in the list. The easiest way to understand the difference I think is with examples of the type ''ti ta frica le ka ce'u viska makau'' vs ''ti ta frica le ka makau viska ce'u'' *****The only reference I could find to Cowan and ''kau'' ("or following Cowan") rejects this usage: [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/5349.] It'd be nice if ''kau'' can do this, but I'm not sure it can. Could you link to some pertinent list messages? I couldn't find any readily. ***If every time we came up with a problem like this we tucked away a prenex, we wouldn't be speaking Lojban, but Chinese. ****I rather like the mirror claim: If every time we came up with a problem like this we avoided a prenex, we wouldn't be speaking Lojban, but English. *****Since ''lenu lo crino cu jinga lo zirpu'' already means ''su'o da poi crino su'o de poi zirpu zo'u: da jinga de'', I believe the use of prenexes to denote discourse topics should be ((considered harmful)), and certainly won't work as the most formal approach to this. ******It's pretty hard to come up with a case where the two uses actually conflict. In this case, use ''le'' + conversion of the main selbri to indicate where the focus is. Since the topic comes from the selbri, it won't interfere with any of the sumti places.