From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon Oct 05 07:49:33 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:49:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MuosW-00018H-5e for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:49:32 -0700 Received: from mail-bw0-f211.google.com ([209.85.218.211]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MuosQ-00016x-Ol for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:49:31 -0700 Received: by bwz7 with SMTP id 7so2802343bwz.34 for ; Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:49:19 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:sender:received:in-reply-to :references:date:x-google-sender-auth:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=1wUaG5Lzsk/0y+rTRmsAETcJCjTii/24hk4joBOq4AE=; b=IjjeF5naKOagYmLSZsrgPDbdfqWGk1ushT3jn9/n17nHclDRjWLckSmd8aft4Hyral t3yauovczaGn2tlTBF3xh5OrjW4Hi1DD/tao6amlIkl0YWmv+Tu1IQbLp/4KMnQYxUxr CbZIrmrTaQArgkWuw98Bj47/uYnLgLc7i3rZo= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:date :x-google-sender-auth:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; b=knd0MJVadtOuLrTRrVBbhy+dcXzkK2VjBRbLOd4UWvxH+mhUhQaBgX10+zmPoxrrbs 5aYv4sZFuWQPNy8PoHql498gWSnjsn4/mas9YTQ9mIWKTlrcCWMf6omsqQbsRi+3utSe YEEs4HiMG0RmGXZsixD7/WKZGxyc3JYkAbiTA= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.103.122.22 with SMTP id z22mr36828mum.123.1254754159709; Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:49:19 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <27513e550910050545v53b8bcd4x6631ee8ead7c3d72@mail.gmail.com> References: <7f1d42860910021120n1033c6a3wbef9131c23f2c9a0@mail.gmail.com> <27513e550910022003g4c4bb780s8c36f55c805feba0@mail.gmail.com> <96f789a60910050447q7f476f89mda57aa07f9ac1607@mail.gmail.com> <27513e550910050545v53b8bcd4x6631ee8ead7c3d72@mail.gmail.com> Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 16:49:19 +0200 X-Google-Sender-Auth: 16e062309e58d050 Message-ID: <4de8c3930910050749y39643394h182172cd290b3e@mail.gmail.com> Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: using 'se' in conversation From: tijlan To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis X-archive-position: 2446 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: jbotijlan@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners 2009/10/5 Oren : >>>The most literal translation of the English is "mi pu noroi viska da >>>poi na se nelci be mi" (I have up-to-now 0-times seen something which >>>it was not true it is liked by me) >>> >>>          --gejyspa > > ki'esai .i mulno  ...(is there a lujvo for "comprehensive" or "thorough?" > =p) > > that was just the explanation I was looking for! > > one follow up question regarding: > > .i mi pu noroi viska da poi na se nelci be mi > (I have up-to-now 0-times seen something such that it's not true that > said-thing is liked by me) > ((I've never seen something I haven't liked)) "be" is actually redundant (but not ungrammatical) in that poi clause. > ...if i wanted to make this sentence sound more chinese with a topic-comment > structure, how close can we get the lojban word order to align to it? > > Chinese/English gloss > > 一个我不喜欢的东西，我从来没有看过 > 一个, 我 , 不 , 喜欢 , 的 , 东西，我 , 从来 , 没有 , 看过 > yige, wo, bu , xihuan , de , dongxi ，wo , conglai , meiyou , kanguo > a, I, not , like, [adjectival-phrase] , thing , ，, I , up-til-now , haven't > , seen > > I don't know how I can put 'I-do-not-like' *in front* of lojban's "da" ... > here's my attempt at reversing the sentence ignoring that feature though: > > .i da poi na se nelci be mi cu be mi pu noroi se viska > (something which is not liked by me, has by-me up-to-now 0-times been seen) I think we should be able to add a descriptor to the pro-sumti in that case: .i lo poi mi na nelci ku'o da [cu] pu noroi se viska (It's closer to the Chinese with "mi" before "nelci".) The current parsers won't validate it. But, if i remember right, i saw xorxes suggesting a form to that effect. This alignment, where modifiers (dependents) come before a nucleus (head), is called 'left-branching', as opposed to 'right-branching'. Apart from Chinese, examples of left-branching languages are Japanese, Turkish, Tamil, Basque, etc. If we are to seek more linguistic neutrality & versatility in Lojban, we want the combination of 'descriptor + pro-sumti' officially acknowledged (supposing it has not yet been). Speaking of "se" and left-branching, also the following form may be of interest to speakers/learners of Chinese or other left-branching languages: lo mlatu sepe lo ratcu 猫的鼠 (Chinese) 猫の鼠 (Japanese) This is the (experimental) inverse of "lo ratcu pe lo mlatu" to get the left-branching alignment with "se" swapping the sumti. And this is one thing which other major conlangs such as Esperanto cannot imitate; you cannot change the order of nouns in "rato de kato" (right-branching), unless some clitic like the one in English is invented: the cat's rat mu'o mi'e tijlan