Back in the day, most basic adjectives were inherently co= mparative: {blanu} was officially "x1 is bluer than x2" (with maybe a few m= ore places -- this is a Loglan word here, btw). This always raised th= e question, when you wanted to use the merely attributive sense, "What is i= t bluer than when it is simply blue" and the answer always was (though no o= ne ever seemed to like) "the standard/average/typical/.... one of what ever= x1 is relevantly at the moment", roughly "blue for a ...". I was usu= ally elided in the "you know what I mean" way, though the opponents always = treated it as a "something" elision. (Using basic comparatives makes a coup= le of moves in semantics a lot easier, which is why it was used. I mi= ss it)

<= hr size=3D"1">From: .arpis= . <rpglover64+jbobau@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, December 16, 2011 2:36:13 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Mini-rant: mutce= and traji must die.

One of the things I really like about lojban (in the abstract, not necessar= ily in practice) is that selbri have places which make explicit certain thi= ngs which are completely implicit in other languages; one example: {rajycla= } has a "by standard" place (inherited from {clani}), which makes it clear = that the "standard of tallness" matters in any discussion of height, and re= quires a different selbri ({rajycla be zi'o}) to ignore it.

It seems to me that spoken lojban will (almost) never use more than thr= ee places, common written lojban will behave similarly, and technical or pe= dantic lojban will have some words (depending on context) which use more pl= aces.

{.ua ro di'u na'e se ganzu}

On Fri, D= ec 16, 2011 at 3:18 PM, Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org&g= t; wrote:

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 0= 2:12:43PM -0600, vitci'i wrote:
> On 12/16/2011 01:31 PM, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> > These places must die!
>
> I'm kind of curious to see how far this can be taken. What would
> happen if, even in gismu, we forbade any place that can be
> replaced by a modal?

Can those places be replaced by a modal? Which one?

I have, fwiw, considered that posibility in my head as well. I
think that's too much of some-other-language-that-isn't-Lojban.

> Consider {cusku}.
>
> x1 (agent) expresses/says x2 (sedu'u/text/lu'e concept) for
> audience x3 via expressive medium x4.
>
> cusku1 is covered by {gau}, and cusku3 is covered by {ri'i}.
> cusku4 is covered by {xebe'i}. Though I'm stretching a bit, cusku2
> could be covered by {fi'o jufra}, leaving us with a zero-place
> gismu.

*snrk*

> I am vaguely imagining a language centered around modals rather
> than predicates, with selbri being created implicitly and nonce by
> the lists of their places. I'm not sure that this is different
> from all gismu having exactly one place.

Yeah, as I say, I've pondered that as well as a thought experiment, but it's a different language. Probably a much more verbose one.

-Robin

--
http://singinst.org/= : Our last, best hope for a fantastic future.
Lojban (http://www.loj= ban.org/): The language in which "this parrot
is dead" is "ti poi spitaki cu morsi", but "this sentence is false"
is "na nei". My personal page: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/rlp/

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