From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Oct 29 16:22:44 2008 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:22:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1KvKNA-0005Pg-6l for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:22:44 -0700 Received: from cdptpa-omtalb.mail.rr.com ([75.180.132.123]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1KvKN7-0005P6-CK for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:22:44 -0700 Received: from chausie ([71.75.215.96]) by cdptpa-omta04.mail.rr.com with ESMTP id <20081029232234.QNBW24054.cdptpa-omta04.mail.rr.com@chausie> for ; Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:22:34 +0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by chausie (Postfix) with ESMTP id 534362BCF for ; Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:22:34 -0400 (EDT) From: Pierre Abbat To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: "I gotta go feed my baby turtles" Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:22:28 -0400 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.6 References: <4de8c3930810290937q7d6436daw557a7dc8ce386e8a@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4de8c3930810290937q7d6436daw557a7dc8ce386e8a@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200810291922.29878.phma@phma.optus.nu> X-Spam-Score: 0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 962 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 Wednesday 29 October 2008 12:37:05 tijlan wrote: > from > http://publius-ovidius.livejournal.com/288241.html > > "There is an artificial language called Lojban which is based on > predicate logic. It was created to form a language in which it is > impossible to form an ambiguous sentence. That's a bit of a shame as > it would eliminate so much humor." > > Do we have any workaround to retain as much humor in Lojban as in > English in terms of ambiguity? A Lojban sentence is *syntactically* unambiguous, but there are other kinds of ambiguity: *Tanru are ambiguous. "fraso ctuca", just like "French teacher", can mean "a teacher who is French" or "someone who teaches French". *"ra" and "ru" refer to some sumti before the one that "ri" would refer to, but unless there are no more than three non-pronoun sumti before it, which one isn't exactly specified. *A letter used as a pronoun refers to something that begins with that letter. If there's more than one, it's ambiguous. There are other kinds of humor too. Consider this: lu li'o ka'u le nu le terdi cu carna le jendu cu cacra li revo li'u .i lu lo'e nu catra zo'u sei la noltroni'u cu cusku ko vimcu le stedu ti li'u mu'omi'e pier.