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Is this correct?

by Alkanadi, February 10, 2016

Messages: 16

Language: English

Tsahraf (User's profile) February 17, 2016, 11:15:16 AM

Yikes!
I said, "he shakes his head." = "Li lavas lian kapon."
Very bad mistake, I meant to say:
"he shakes his head." = "Li skuas lian kapon."
I doubt there is any culture where one washes someone's head to indicate "no."

I agree it should be "sian" instead of "lian." That is how I see Zamenhof using "sian" in La Sankta Biblia. For example:
"nun eble li etendos sian manon..."

sergejm (User's profile) February 18, 2016, 5:27:44 AM

'Li skuas lian kapon' is understandable if there is no other 'li'.
But in
'Kliento venis al frizejo kaj petis, ke frizisto frizu lian barbon'
this means client's beard, 'sian barbon' would mean barber's beard.

nornen (User's profile) February 18, 2016, 3:21:42 PM

sergejm:'Li skuas lian kapon' is understandable if there is no other 'li'.
I dare to disagree. "Li skuas lian kapon" without doubt implies that there are indeed two different persons involved: The shaker and the owner of the head. It is impossible that this sentence refers to only one person.

erinja (User's profile) February 18, 2016, 4:12:30 PM

nornen:
sergejm:'Li skuas lian kapon' is understandable if there is no other 'li'.
I dare to disagree. "Li skuas lian kapon" without doubt implies that there are indeed two different persons involved: The shaker and the owner of the head. It is impossible that this sentence refers to only one person.
Right.

Even if you understood through context that the person means to say "Li skuas sian kapon", by definition the sentence has to refer to another "li", so if there is clearly only one "li" in the picture, then you assume the person speaking made a grammatical error.

Miland (User's profile) February 19, 2016, 8:42:46 AM

Here's a historical question: the respective uses of sian and lian can be seen in the Fundamenta ekzercaro. But where did the grammatical principle just stated first appear explicitly? It's in PMEG, of course.

Kirilo81 (User's profile) February 19, 2016, 8:50:35 AM

si is in the Unua Libro, its use as a reflexive pronoun and the non-reflexive use of li, ŝi, ĝi, ili is there from the beginning (as it is common for Russian and Polish, so don't expect Z to make errors here).

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