From lojban-beginners+bncCNCCoMTMDhDdjOblBBoEqCZeng@googlegroups.com Sat Oct 16 04:03:23 2010 Received: from mail-wy0-f189.google.com ([74.125.82.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1P74Xn-0004Uu-C0; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:03:23 -0700 Received: by wyb39 with SMTP id 39sf926295wyb.16 for ; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:03:12 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:x-beenthere:received:received:received :received:received-spf:received:received:mime-version:received :in-reply-to:references:from:date:message-id:subject:to :x-original-sender:x-original-authentication-results:reply-to :precedence:mailing-list:list-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive :sender:list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type; bh=5lI9f+Jfuv4k5siiNhbJa9HVEs37ziHV+RGnVfZ+Sdg=; b=ON/2xAQVbT0zX+csXmmVXjuQQz9txjhOpndCTUHGAr95ZpzUabaHbft6qX5+SFL6HY mfibOcn6Gs+A4gjs3m+2Du5mLhqgXI8KE/QaCLu46WokU5BfBBRgZ09EN741W2rcgCmp G1HcS51jEhSyRF5OOziBNM9PcCx5Ch9QG6vk4= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:from :date:message-id:subject:to:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender:list-subscribe :list-unsubscribe:content-type; b=swHP0BFUcGMgn/YrXQfne4L3u6C+47HVs0Im/rdrJ3gJz8DzvfCOOldNN7l7LpWK/l w3aMwXVUXdTHoM1RCozqT903G6k35rL8C82h0J4GuIRtbDJzIYHciHkph1bbOP5239eb sxS8BjG5/8cIIbJ8g+x3QTzN/1MLCrxACDz9s= Received: by 10.216.237.89 with SMTP id x67mr139732weq.28.1287226973646; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:02:53 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.216.242.202 with SMTP id i52ls807978wer.0.p; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:02:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.216.93.77 with SMTP id k55mr142606wef.7.1287226972148; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:02:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.216.93.77 with SMTP id k55mr142605wef.7.1287226972123; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:02:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail-wy0-f169.google.com (mail-wy0-f169.google.com [74.125.82.169]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTP id v4si4228279weq.9.2010.10.16.04.02.51; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:02:51 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of selckiku@gmail.com designates 74.125.82.169 as permitted sender) client-ip=74.125.82.169; Received: by wyf28 with SMTP id 28so1881229wyf.0 for ; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:02:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.227.128.68 with SMTP id j4mr2292094wbs.52.1287226970928; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:02:50 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.227.28.16 with HTTP; Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:02:20 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: From: Stela Selckiku Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2010 07:02:20 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [lojban-beginners] Getting in to the Lojban mindset To: lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com X-Original-Sender: selckiku@gmail.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of selckiku@gmail.com designates 74.125.82.169 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=selckiku@gmail.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com; contact lojban-beginners+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 3:37 AM, mashers wrote: > coi ro do fi'i > So, does anyone have any suggestions for how I can begin to > reprogramme my brain? I'm aware that after 27 years of exposure to > English, my thought patterns are based on English and it will take > time to start understanding and formulating concepts in a different > way. I just have no idea how to begin to do this! Give it time. That's the main thing that's going to help, really. Sleep on it a bunch of times. Don't expect it to make sense all at once. But I guess I'll try to give you some specific advice. Focus on understanding the basics. If you can deeply understand the shape of a simple bridi, then you understand most of the language. Everything in Lojban is made out of that shape. We take a zillion different looking things that are all fundamentally simple bridi, and cram them together into one complex bridi. For instance descriptions with an article, like "lo" or "le", are really whole bridi that are just grabbed by their x1. The rest of the places are still there, hidden (and can be revealed by be/bei/be'o). For instance every time you say "lo klama", the goer, there's a hidden bridi wrapped up there, where "klama" is the selbri. The x1 (the goer) is connected to the bridi the sumti "lo klama" is in, but the rest of the sumti of "klama" are still there, dangling invisibly-- there's a destination and origin and route and vehicle that are all silently implied. Other seemingly complex grammatical features are also just ways of connecting simple bridi together. You can attach a noi/poi/voi to a sumti to add another description of it. It's described as being in the "ke'a" place (often ke'a is just implied, it's usually secretly in the first unfilled place of the embedded bridi). So one sumti is described two ways, by the place it has in the bridi it's subordinate to, and also as taking the "ke'a" place in the noi/poi/voi bridi. I feel like my descriptions of how it works are making it sound complex. It does SOUND complex. But it's not, not really. Well it is, and it isn't. There's only one shape that does everything. In a way that's tremendously simple. Once you understand how the bridi shape does everything, acts like "verbs" and "nouns" and "adjectives" and "descriptions" and everything, it's a very simple and elegant way to do things. A lot of things in Lojban are so simple they're difficult to explain. Once you've explained it, it seems like you haven't said anything. All you've said is that yet another construct in the language is shaped like a bridi, because they all are, and where it plugs in to another bridi and how they're related semantically. A lot of the things in Lojban are specific kinds of vagueness. Lojban is masterful at vagueness. It's also OK at specificity and exactness. But vagueness is where it really shines. That might be counterintuitive, it might seem like it doesn't fit with our mission. But actually as you come to understand it, you realize that that's exactly how we accomplish what we set out to accomplish. A language where you express everything in the universe exactly all the time isn't possible. The nature of language is to compress real, complicated situations into tremendously simple, low-bandwidth descriptions. The only way that Lojban can have the kind of precision and directness that we want is by quarantining the imprecision and indirection that are necessary to communicate efficiently. So we have a lot of places where we have very specific, precise vagueness. For instance take tanru. Every tanru has two parts, the se tanru or seltanru or seltau (the first part) and the te tanru or tertanru or tertau (the second part). The rule is simple: The tertau determines the structure of the bridi (and a tanru is always the heart of a bridi, either a main bridi or a subordinate bridi or a hidden bridi in a description). The tertau is where you must be accurate, where the precision and exactness of Lojban are in play. The seltau on the other hand is just related to the tertau.... somehow. It's utterly vague. It's even vague how vague it is. It could be so closely related to the tertau that for instance it's identical to the x1, as in a "xunre plise" (red apple) that's both red and an apple. It could be so distantly related to the tertau that it's related by vaguely reminding you of something that looks like someone who talked to the tertau's brother last Wednesday. All of the exactness is confined to the tertau. All of the vagueness is confined to the seltau. Everything in Lojban is made of these ingredients: Simple bridi, aggregated together into complicated shapes. Some of the joints are perfectly precise: A sumti marked with noi/poi is definitely in the "ke'a" role, exactly as if it had appeared in that as a main bridi. Some of the joints are perfectly vague: A seltau has some sort of relationship with its tertau. > Just to give a bit of background, I am a native English speaker. I > am a trained and practicing Speech and Language Therapist (so > linguistics and cognition are my speciality). I am dyslexic, > dyspraxic and somewhere on the high functioning end of the > autistic spectrum, but fortunately that does not inhibit my passion > for linguistics to any significant degree :-) Oh hello again! I recognize that self-description, we talked on IRC a few days ago. :) mi'e .telselkik. mu'o -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Lojban Beginners" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban-beginners+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban-beginners?hl=en.