On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 2:35 AM, Gleki Arxokuna <= span dir=3D"ltr"><gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

Suggestion for a new animacy marker in Lojban.

Many if not most languages divide all predicates into levels of animac= y.

English, for instance, has at least two levels. These are the pronouns= for them

1. Animate. He/she

2. Inanimate. It

This allows quickly determine agents of most actions.

Example:

The woman was looking at the mirror. It was ugly.

Let's try it in Lojban.

{lo ninmu pu ca'o catlu lo minra .i ta pu tolmelbi}

No, too ambiguous. And I opine that counting two sumti back in order t= o use {ra} is much trickier for human brain than just understanding semanti= c roles of sumti.

Therefore, I suggest introducing a new marker reflecting animacy of an= y object. I'll use {xoi} which currently bears no official meaning.

xoi - marks preceding construct as animate

xoinai - marks preceding construct as inanimate

{lo ninmu pu ca'o catlu lo minra. i ta xoinai pu tolmelbi}

However, some languages have more levels of animacy.

The father was looking at his son. He was beautiful.

{lo patfu pu catlu lo bersa .i ta xoixime'i pu melbi}

The author of this sentence probably thinks that children are less ani= mate than grown-ups.=A0

So we can build a scale ranging from most animate objects to inanimate= .

It's only the speaker who decides what level of animacy this or th= at object has.

Gender-specific pronouns.

You might argue why not add more specific markers reflecting for insta= nce the gender of the object described.

Let's repeat once again.

English has at least two levels. These are the pronouns for them

1. Animate. He/she

2. Inanimate. It

In other words, English has two pronouns expressing sex but only one p= ronoun expressing inanimate objects.

There might be languages that split inanimate levels into other specif= ic classes (furniture, houses, weapons).

Therefore, it would be stupid to try to import all those quirks of nat= langs. {ta poi nakni} is fine.

Unsettled issues.

Some languages have "abstractions" in their lowest level of = animacy hierarchy.

Lojban is pretty strict when dealing with objects and abstractions. Th= e issue with the scale "su'unai - su'u" that one might im= agine remains unsettled.

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