From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Mar 02 07:41:58 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Fri, 02 Mar 2007 07:42:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1HN9tJ-0004Qh-K6 for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Fri, 02 Mar 2007 07:41:56 -0800 Received: from sparkle.rodents.montreal.qc.ca ([216.46.5.7] ident=NFtmuiKIlrQ99jgPd4Qc5QkSPE7YCXOv0mWg0qnDRys) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1HN9sn-0004QE-At for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Fri, 02 Mar 2007 07:41:51 -0800 Received: (from mouse@localhost) by Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA10214; Fri, 2 Mar 2007 10:41:17 -0500 (EST) From: der Mouse Message-Id: <200703021541.KAA10214@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Erik-Conspiracy: There is no Conspiracy - and if there were I wouldn't be part of it anyway. X-Message-Flag: Microsoft: the company who gave us the botnet zombies. Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 10:16:05 -0500 (EST) To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: lojban-beginners Digest V6 #30 In-Reply-To: References: X-Spam-Score: -2.6 X-Spam-Score-Int: -25 X-Spam-Bar: -- X-archive-position: 4082 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners > I would argue that there are adjectives and adverbs in Lojban, at > least in the traditional linguistic sense. When I say {le xekri > mlatu} for "the black cat", {mlatu} is a noun and {xekri} is > modifying it - making it an adjective. I call malglico. Neither of those gismu has either of those types. {xekri} is functioning here as an adjective, but to think of it as an adjective because it can work that way strikes me as an error; it is just as *gramatically* sensible to say {le xekri mlatu} as {le mlatu xekri} - though admittedly the latter means something less likely to be intended (and is more complicated to gloss into English, because English *does* have nouns and adjectives and verbs, and thus demands the use of placeholders like "thing" and converters like "-like" or "-ish"). And {mlatu} does not become a "noun" until it's under the influence of {le}; I'd say it would be closer to accurate to say that {le ... mlatu} is a noun. (If you still think {mlatu} qua {mlatu} is a noun, consider {mi mlatu}.) Quite aside from the mistake of assigning English parts of speech to gismu as such, I think that calling a relation expressor - a gismu, for example - a "verb" is malglico in another way, too: it is confusing two distinct concepts because each is the nearest thing available in its language to the other. Relationships expressed in English always involve verbs, but that's because the structure of English compels it; there is no more inherent need to have a verbal in something like "is a cat" than there is to have a subject in "it is raining". "Is a cat" is the closest English gloss to {mlatu} in many of its uses, but "catness" is another plausible one. This is one reason I find lojban so fascinating: it exposes a layer of Sapir-Whorf-ness I'd never been aware of before. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B