10.22. Conversion of sumtcita: JAI

The following cmavo are discussed in this section:

jai	JAI	tense conversion
fai	FA	indefinite place

Conversion is the regular Lojban process of moving around the places of a place structure. The cmavo of selma'o SE serve this purpose, exchanging the first place with one of the others:

Example 10.162.

mi	cu	klama	le	zarci
I		go-to	the	market.

Example 10.163.

le	zarci	cu	se klama	mi
The	market		is-gone-to	by-me.

It is also possible to bring a place that is specified by a sumtcita (for the purposes of this chapter, a tense sumtcita) to the front, by using jai plus the tense as the grammatical equivalent of SE:

Example 10.164.

le	ratcu	cu	citka	le	cirla	vi	le	panka
The	rat		eats	the	cheese	[short-distance]	the	park.

The rat eats the cheese in the park.

Example 10.165.

le	panka	cu	jai vi	citka	le	cirla	fai	le	ratcu
The	park		is-the-place-of	eating	the	cheese	by	the	rat.

The park is where the rat eats the cheese.

In Example 10.165, the construction JAI+tense converts the location sumti into the first place. The previous first place has nowhere to go, since the location sumti is not a numbered place; however, it can be inserted back into the bridi with fai, the indefinite member of selma'o FA.

(The other members of FA are used to mark the first, second, etc. places of a bridi explicitly:

Example 10.166.

fa mi cu klama fe le zarci

means the same as

Example 10.167.

fe le zarci cu klama fa mi

as well as the simple

Example 10.168.

mi cu klama le zarci

in which the place structure is determined by position.)

Like SE conversion, JAI+tense conversion is especially useful in descriptions with LE selma'o:

Example 10.169.

mi	viska	le	jai vi	citka	be	le	cirla
I	saw	the	place-of	eating		the	cheese.

Here the eater of the cheese is elided, so no fai appears.

Of course, temporal tenses are also usable with JAI:

Example 10.170.

mi	djuno	fi	le	jai	ca	morsi	be	fai	la	.djan.
I	know	about	the		[present]	is-dead		of	that-named	“John”	.

I know the time of John's death.

I know when John died.