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Re: [lojban] The Wizard of Oz



On 29 November 2017 at 16:05, <vpbroman@gmail.com> wrote:
And,

As I read it, xorlo "le" and "la" are pretty much the same as in CLL, except for default quantification.
In CLL around 6.2.6 I understand that a name (a cmene or a la sumti) is an arbitrary identifier, attached to something by the act of naming, instead of by reference to dictionary meanings and observation.

`` The last descriptor of this section is “la”, which indicates that the selbri which follows it has been dissociated from its normal meaning and is being used as a name. Like “le” descriptions, “la” descriptions are implicitly restricted to those I have in mind. ''

In the original translation of "the Cowardly Lion" as "la tolvirnu cinfo", for example, this identification is used because the critter is cowardly and he is a lion, it's not some kind of CB handle.
None of the "la" expressions I'm concerned about ever get used with a vocative.
They are descriptive phrases that seem to me to be very standard cases for using "le".
We should write "le xamgu termakfyfetsi", "le smani", "le rijno cutci", etc.

Is there a variety of lojban where this is not the case?

We can see from the capitalization that "Cowardly Lion" is a name; it may or may not be etymologically aptronymous, and even if it is aptronymous, the underlying description, "cowardly lion", is only the reason for why that phrase became CL's name and is not the name itself. And if the names are not used vocatively, that just suggests that the name is applied by the narrator and not by the characters. That was as far as the thinking behind my original reply got. It now also occurs to me that "la tolvirnu cinfo" doesn't distinguish between "Cowardly Lion" and "the Cowardly Lion", but I can't think of how that English distinction, whose semantic import (if there is any) is not at all apparent to me, might be rendered in Lojban. "Le tolvirnu cinfo" is, of course, not a name; and it is well to remember that "le" may be glossed "a(n)" just as well as "the", so it's as if CL were constantly referred to as "a cowardly lion", which is something nobody but Jaqen H'ghar would do. "le" primarily encodes specificity whereas English names (not even those of "the X" sort) don't. 

It's interesting to wonder what translation would have been suitable had the original not been a name, and if instead the character were simply always referred to as "the cowardly lion": the main semantic ingredient contributed by the "the" then would be the definiteness. "lo bi'u nai tolvirnu cinfo" captures the definiteness but of course foregrounds it too much, and probably "lo tolvirnu cinfo" would be the best rendition.

What motivated me to make my original response was not just that "le tolvirnu cinfo" is very inferior to "la tolvirnu cinfo" as a rendition of the English but also that it was a change inflicted on somebody else's translation and furthermore was inflicted on it as if it were a correction rather than an incorrection.

--And.

 

la bremenli

On Monday, November 27, 2017 at 2:20:30 AM UTC-8, And Rosta wrote:


On 26 Nov 2017 16:36, <vpbr...@gmail.com> wrote:

One substantive global kind of change was made.
Among all the uses of "la", there were many cases where it is followed by a verb phrase, and where the _expression_ is not at all a name, but a description, for example "la tolvirnu cinfo".
All such non-names got "la" replaced with "le".


That looks a deleterious change, unless post-xorlo "le" has been completely redefined from what it formerly was. The original "la" captures properly the English, whereas semitraditional "le" does not at all. (By "semitraditional" I mean to exclude the habitual solecistic misuse that prevailed in early Lojban writing, where "le" was used as the default gadri, with sillinesses such as "le nu".)

--And.

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