History: le broda ku na brode Gotcha

(repeating from Gotchas)

See also naku.

This means "Not all of the brodas are brode". To say the more intuitive "(Each of) the broda(s) are not brode", the negation must be "na ku" and follow the le sumti, "le broda ku na ku brode".
(This bit written by And; the rest added anonynously. No problem admitting the 'Swallowing my annoyance' bit is mine --- mi'e nitcion)

That doesn't make any sense. And even if it did, it seems broken that that elidable terminator can affect the semantics like that.

Swallowing my annoyance at anything in The Book being called into question , I refer you to http://www.lojban.org/files/reference-grammar/chap16.html .

As it turns out:

• le broda na brode = ro le broda na brode = naku ro le broda cu brode = naku ro le broda zo'u: le broda cu brode = It is not true that for all As, A does B.
  • na has scope over the entire bridi, by default.
• le broda naku brode = ro le broda naku brode = ro le broda naku zo'u: le broda cu brode = It is true that for all As, it is not the case that: A does B.
  • na has scope over whatever follows le broda

naku is a floating sumti, and not a 'tense', like normal na; so this isn't just a matter of an elidable terminator. In fact, in ro da naku su'o de na klama, the two na are doing quite different jobs; and the ku is not elidable there at all.

Of course, the 'user-friendly' way to approach this is to dodge na completely, and use na'e in this case.

This is only an issue if there is more than one of le broda. If there is exactly one, they both mean the same.

Also, le broda naku brode is equivalent to no le broda cu brode.