From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sun May 10 10:31:13 2009 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Sun, 10 May 2009 10:31:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1M3Crp-0006io-KF for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Sun, 10 May 2009 10:31:13 -0700 Received: from an-out-0708.google.com ([209.85.132.248]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1M3Crh-0006iU-8g for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Sun, 10 May 2009 10:31:13 -0700 Received: by an-out-0708.google.com with SMTP id d40so8533454and.1 for ; Sun, 10 May 2009 10:31:03 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:in-reply-to:references :date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=KG/N+iazbunv+etjTa7kqSuuqjbrH+fb5txkTvBsnf4=; b=u7AJHqBK4KMLGq2jxJzjxD2Fu7XZGHXnZPBqUhlqQduZmGzmF+3npW2+7lE1NwRR6V h6NC9bBAOtANswbm5oLcu4TXOEP2GNcq1e7lvRdI5IvGcZZIzDAwNiZeiKuLYRwrB4PH 27UUR6/RX+o2/ZVsfVsZJY9BSW6763NsY9RmM= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=jyj2MVgfPtyoGJenHpmVv+aSoUzGceaeEfHQDDkisM7r4f8R9m7F646PAtss8rWXBI qPTALyDKfmbWldNQv+0CVHm3td9rUYoB4zzn7Rz9CBC6k2xwpKh2faz2DqJOKGfNkUVU 03ybPpqCXIM7mhtoobZ2crossHxy0tDiUJBBI= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.231.15.6 with SMTP id i6mr1760438iba.12.1241976662946; Sun, 10 May 2009 10:31:02 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <7f1d42860905081030u57f0a628x8cdb1695a8a9e8c7@mail.gmail.com> References: <7f1d42860904301145j6f589846p16fff6abd42b4547@mail.gmail.com> <7f1d42860904301207v7a49ab65ke15dbe185d78cf45@mail.gmail.com> <5715b9300904301217y6493ade8k80eb802debf51b28@mail.gmail.com> <200905040346.55611.phma@phma.optus.nu> <7f1d42860905081030u57f0a628x8cdb1695a8a9e8c7@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sun, 10 May 2009 13:31:02 -0400 Message-ID: <425e4ac20905101031g6378ca1cl9dca889a8df8a719@mail.gmail.com> Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: simple question From: Stela Selckiku To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-archive-position: 1643 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: selckiku@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 1:30 PM, Ryan Leach wrote: > My confusion with connectives stems from the way the chapter in CLL on > connectives was laid out. To be honest, I didn't understand most of > it. The chapter made me feel as though I was reading an advanced paper > on physics rather than information about a language. My confusion is > at that dangerous level where I'm not sure what I don't know, much > less what I know. CLL is a great book, so much so that many people (including myself) have learned Lojban from it, even though it is not a textbook. CLL is basically just a grammar outline. In the connectives section for instance what you have is a few paragraphs explaining every different kind of connection in the language. There's actually more text explaining about the obscure things you'll rarely see, because they're more complicated. The best textbook we have is Lojban for Beginners. I recommend reading the chapter there on connectives too. It focuses on some of the more common conections: sumti, tanru and bridi-tails. That's a perfectly adequate set that will get you a long way as a beginner. The only things I'd perhaps add to that are sentence connection (which is quite simple-- maybe LfB covers it and I missed it in skimming it just now) and modal sentence connection with "bo", like ".i ki'u bo" (and because of that). Let me get more specific about what you shouldn't learn, what you should postpone learning. First I'll start with the truth tables. What you'll encounter most commonly is E, both being true. Sometimes you'll see negation used with E, but it's relatively simple to understand (the negated one isn't true, but the other one still is). Second most commonly you'll see A, inclusive or, meaning either the first part or the second part or both are true. Use of A with negation is terribly confusing but blessedly less common these days since we've convinced people to translate "if" more sensible ways. You'll see O, if-and-only-if, only occassionally, basically saying, "these two things go together". A little more common I think actually but still fairly rare is O+nai, which is exclusive or, one is true or the other but not both. (If this, then not that-- if not that, then this. So, one or the other.) U, whether or not, is simple enough and useful in my opinion, but seems actually to be fairly rare. So, get comfortable with E-- it's simple, it's powerful, it's what's mostly used to connect things. Then next learn A and O, and don't worry too much about U. If negation and truth tables confuses you, don't worry about it-- you're not the only one, believe me. Complicated logical connections are rare in conversation-- mostly they're used occasionally as experiments-- and "huh wtf does that mean" would generally be considered a reasonable response. I think we should probably emphasize this more to new people, because they read this stuff and have no idea how rarely we actually make logical connections between anything, conversationally. That stuff is there when you need it or to play around with, but conversational Lojban translates mostly not into "if X then logically therefore either Y or not Z" but rather into "yo wazzuuuuuuuuuuuup peeps, what's going down". Just so you know. The most common kinds of connection you're going to encounter are sumti connection, and sentence connection. Sentence connection is usually just ".i je", putting a "je" after the sentence link, which basically just gives a stronger sense of relatedness to two sentences than just putting them side by side. Other truth tables can be used the same way of course (like ".i jo nai", either one sentence is true or the other but not both), but they rarely are. Sumti connection is almost as simple-- you put ".e" between two sumti, just as you put ".i je" between two sentences-- the only trick is that you have to understand what a sumti is and how to form one, in order to put a sumti on either side. (Understanding sumti is essential to understanding the whole language, of course, so hopefully that's not asking too much.) You can use prosumti on both sides: "mi .e do", or a prosumti on one side and a name or description on the other: "mi .e le prenu" or "le prenu .e mi", or a description on both sides: "le gerku .e le mlatu". In English you can say "the dog and the cat" or you can say "the dog and cat", but it's not right to say "le gerku .e mlatu" in Lojban, because "mlatu" on its own is just a selbri, it only becomes a sumti when it also has an article. Using "gi'e" to tie up bridi-tails is a bit of a trick, but one that's worth learning because it's a popular sentence shape these days. I think of it as just "gi'e" in my mind, usually, because any other truth tables than E are extremely rare in bridi-tail connection. You can say "gi'onai" to connect bridi-tails one-or-the-otherly, of course, but you'll hardly ever see it. What you're connecting with "gi'e" is two tails, starting with the selbri. A bridi tail is a selbri, and also any arguments that follow it. So an example of a tail is "citka lo nanba", eat bread. Another tail could be "klama lo zarci", go to a market. With "gi'e" we can give both of those tails the same head, for instance "mi": mi citka lo nanba gi'e klama lo zarci (I eat bread and go to a market.) Because "mi" comes before the selbri, it's part of the head and is shared: I do both the eating and going. Technically you can put more than one sumti in the head: mi lo nanba cu nelci gi'e citka (I like and eat the bread.) Because "lo nanba" also comes before the selbri, it's both x2 places as well. I believe this is quite rare. There's also a cool trick where you can put extra sumti after a "vau" at the end at it goes onto both tails: mi citka gi'e nelci vau lo nanba (Same meaning as above.) That's also rare. Don't worry about those tricks if they confuse you right now. They're just there to make "gi'e" groovy. Forethought connection as a whole is unpopular these days. I couldn't teach you sentence forethought right now if I wanted to without looking it up in the book. Forethought connection is perfectly easy to learn and use, and so it's probably just malglico that we depend day-to-day on ".e" and "je" and "gi'e"-- they're just syntactically closer to "and". Lojban is a living language, though, and things are as they are. So I suggest not worrying about foresight connection at all at first. Later once you're more fluent we can brush up on them together and see if we can't make them popular enough that nintadni will need to know them. :) Hopefully that gives you some sense of what connectives actually see the most use these days, so you know what to focus on to get yourself to a conversational level with us. After you've been confused once or twice by the theoretical descriptions, please come follow some normal conversation (on #lojban on freenode, !lojban on identi.ca, etc) and begin to find out which few of those tricks you'll really need to know to catch up with the habitual patterns of today's Lojban. It's not half as difficult as it looks. :) mu'o mi'e la stela se ckiku