From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon Oct 01 16:23:30 2007 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:23:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IcUbq-0006Rq-5c for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:23:30 -0700 Received: from phma.optus.nu ([166.82.175.165] helo=ixazon.dynip.com) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1IcUbk-0006Rd-FV for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:23:29 -0700 Received: from chausie (unknown [192.168.7.4]) by ixazon.dynip.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D4AA4CE89C for ; Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:23:21 -0400 (EDT) From: Pierre Abbat To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Compataives and superlatives Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:23:18 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.5 References: <493269.83626.qm@web88010.mail.re2.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <493269.83626.qm@web88010.mail.re2.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200710011923.18848.phma@phma.optus.nu> X-Spam-Score: 0.1 X-Spam-Score-Int: 1 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 5457 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: phma@phma.optus.nu Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Monday 01 October 2007 13:41, ANDREW PIEKARSKI wrote: > coi rodo > > I've just re-read the section in CLL on comparatives and superlatives. > "more", "less", and "most" are discussed but "least" doesn't even get a > mention. Then I discover a lujvo for "least": {mecrai}. So, whereas the > lojban for "more" and "less" is symmetrical "most" and "least" seem to be > treated completely differently. In "most", the property is inherent in the > lujvo itself so there is no need for an X3 defining the property, while in > "least" {mecrai}, X3 defines the property being compared. > > Have I got it right, or am I missing the point somewhere? Why the apparent > lack of symmetry (which, after all, is good to have as it helps us > remember! I'm not sure why the lack of symmetry, but what you missed is that there are two meanings of "most" and "least": the meaning when they're used by themselves, and the meaning when used to form a superlative. {mecrai} is "least" by itself; its opposite is {zmarai}. The superlative is formed by adding {-rai}. I suppose that the inferlative [?] could be formed with {-mecrai}, but I don't know if anyone's used such a word, and it would raise the question of what {-maurai} means. {tolrai} doesn't mean "least", it means "mediocre" (least extremal). phma