8.7. Possessive sumti

In Example 8.15 through Example 8.17 , the sumti le mi karce appears, glossed as “my car”. Although it might not seem so, this sumti actually contains a relative phrase. When a sumti appears between a descriptor and its description selbri, it is actually a pe relative phrase. So

Example 8.59.

le	mi	karce	cu	xunre
	My	car		is-red.

and

Example 8.60.

le	pe	mi	karce	cu	xunre
The	(associated-with	me)	car		is-red.

mean exactly the same thing. Furthermore, since there are no special considerations of quantifiers here,

Example 8.61.

le	karce	pe	mi	cu	xunre
The	car	associated-with	me		is-red.

means the same thing as well. A sumti like the one in Example 8.59 is called a “possessive sumti”. Of course, it does not really indicate possession in the sense of ownership, but like pe relative phrases, indicates only weak association; you can say le mi karce even if you've only borrowed it for the night. (In English, “my car” usually means le karce po mi , but we do not have the same sense of possession in “my seat on the bus” ; Lojban simply makes the weaker sense the standard one.) The inner sumti, mi in Example 8.59 , is correspondingly called the “possessor sumti”.

Historically, possessive sumti existed before any other kind of relative phrase or clause, and were retained when the machinery of relative phrases and clauses as detailed in this chapter so far was slowly built up. When preposed relative clauses of the Example 8.60 type were devised, possessive sumti were most easily viewed as a special case of them.

Although any sumti, however complex, can appear in a full-fledged relative phrase, only simple sumti can appear as possessor sumti, without a pe. Roughly speaking, the legal possessor sumti are: pro-sumti, quotations, names and descriptions, and numbers. In addition, the possessor sumti may not be preceded by a quantifier, as such a form would be interpreted as the unusual “descriptor + quantifier + sumti” type of description. All these sumti forms are explained in full in Chapter 6.

Here is an example of a description used in a possessive sumti:

Example 8.62.

le		le	nanmu	ku	karce	cu	blanu
The	(associated-with	the	man	)	car		is-blue.

The man's car is blue.

Note the explicit ku at the end of the possessor sumti, which prevents the selbri of the possessor sumti from merging with the selbri of the main description sumti. Because of the need for this ku , the most common kind of possessor sumti are pro-sumti, especially personal pro-sumti, which require no elidable terminator. Descriptions are more likely to be attached with relative phrases.

And here is a number used as a possessor sumti:

Example 8.63.

le	li	mu	jdice	se bende
The	of-the-number	five	judging	team-member

Juror number 5

which is not quite the same as “the fifth juror” ; it simply indicates a weak association between the particular juror and the number 5.

A possessive sumti may also have regular relative clauses attached to it. This would need no comment if it were not for the following special rule: a relative clause immediately following the possessor sumti is understood to affect the possessor sumti, not the possessive. For example:

Example 8.64.

le	mi	noi	sipna	vau	karce	cu	na	klama
The	of-me	incidentally-which-(	is-sleeping	)	car		isn't	going.

means that my car isn't going; the incidental claim of noi sipna applies to me, not my car, however. If I wanted to say that the car is sleeping (whatever that might mean) I would need:

Example 8.65.

le	mi	karce	poi	sipna	cu	na	klama
The	of-me	car	which	sleeps		isn't	going.

Note that Example 8.64 uses vau rather than ku'o at the end of the relative clause: this terminator ends every simple bridi and is almost always elidable; in this case, though, it is a syllable shorter than the equally valid alternative, ku'o.