On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 6:37 AM, Michael Everson= <michael.everson@gmail.com> wrote:

On 26 Aug 2012, at 09:32, Jonathan Jones wrote:

>> Daddy is reading a story to Mary. Daddy is doing the voices. Does = Daddy-as-narrator say "lu" and "li'u", or does Dadd= y-as-Alice say "lu" and "li'u"?
>>
>> The way you have it, with lu=C2=AB and li'u=C2=BB, would imply= that Daddy-as-narrator says "lu" but that Daddy-as-Alice will sa= y "li'u".
>
> No, because the "=C2=BB" is not the ending quotation mark. T= he "li'u" is.

No, because "li'u" is a quotation-ending word, not quot= ation-ending punctuation. Punctuation and capitalization is merely decorati= ve: the words of the text as spoken should be the same as the words of the = text as written, and any use of punctuation and capitalization may be made = for clarity can easily be stripped out and the underlying text would be the= same.

The fact that {li'u} is a word, not a symbol, doe= s not make it any less a mark. It marks the end of the quote. It is, theref= ore, a mark. As to the rest of your comment- you are now arguing my side fo= r me. If the purely decorative punctuation has no effect on the text, then = obviously- from the text's viewpoint, and therefore the reader's as= well- which side the =C2=AB and =C2=BB has no effect on when the falsetto = speaking begins and ends. However, I know of no language- written in Latin = orthography or otherwise- in which punctuation is purely decorative /except= / in cases where the language has /words/ as punctuation, as Lojban does, a= nd in these cases the "purely decorative" symbols are rarely if e= ver used.
=C2=A0

>> Regarding "xu?" the typographical stri= cture is rather odd. In Chinese one asks "Ni hao ma?" where there= is a redundant question mark by the question particle. In Irish one asks &= quot;An bhfuil t=C3=BA ceart go leor?" with the question mark ending t= he sentence -- but the question particle is the first word "an". = Nevertheless one does not write "An? dtuigeann t=C3=BA."
>
> It may be odd, but it's Lojban. A lot of things in Lojban are &quo= t;odd".

That doesn't make them user-friendly or functional. :-)

> And in this respect, All foreign symbols, such as !?"=C2=AB=C2=BB= #$ etc., are entirely redundant and only serve to help non-proficient reade= rs.

They are redundant, yes, and may "serve to help non-proficient r= eaders" but that is not their only function. Punctuation and capitaliz= ation are the rule and not the exception for languages which write using th= e Latin script. Since most everyone who comes to Lojban comes to it from on= e of those languages, it makes little sense for Lojban to jettison typograp= hic richness for an aesthetic of sparseness. (That's my opinion anyway.= )

Lojban didn't jettison for aesthetic reasons. It = did so specifically to attempt to maximize, as you say, "the words of = the text as spoken should be the same as the words of the text as written&q= uot;. By making the punctuation be words, the level of simila= rity between spoken Lojban and written Lojban is nearly one to one., and mu= ch, much higher than languages in any script that use punctuation symbols.<= br>

=C2=A0

> In this respect it is more like your Chinese example, as the symbols a= re /always/ adjacent to the Lojban word they represent.

They are "always" there only when people choose to put them= there. Esperanto's question particle "=C4=89u" comes at the = beginning of a sentences just as the Lojban "xu" often does, yet = the question mark is placed at the end of the sentence in Esperanto without= any loss of meaning or confusion.

Michael