On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 6:23 AM, Michael Everson= <michael.everson@gmail.com> wrote:

On 26 Aug 2012, at 13:40, Jonathan Jones wrote:

>>>> The way you have it, with lu=C2=AB and li'u=C2=BB, wou= ld imply that Daddy-as-narrator says "lu" but that Daddy-as-Alice= will say "li'u".
>>>
>>> No, because the "=C2=BB" is not the ending quotation= mark. The "li'u" is.
>>>
>> No, because "li'u" is a quotation-ending word, not q= uotation-ending punctuation. Punctuation and capitalization is merely decor= ative: the words of the text as spoken should be the same as the words of t= he text as written, and any use of punctuation and capitalization may be ma= de 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, does not make it any= less a mark. It marks the end of the quote. It is, therefore, a mark.

Sorry, no. You're employing semantic legerdemain here, based on t= he polysemy of "mark".

No I'm not. I= am using the same sense of "mark" each time. The fact that you a= re confusing "mark" with "symbol" is not my fault.
=C2=A0

<snip>

> If the purely decorative punctuation has no effect on the text, then o= bviously- 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 s= peaking begins and ends. However, I know of no language- written in Latin o= rthography or otherwise- in which punctuation is purely decorative /except/= in cases where the language has /words/ as punctuation, as Lojban does, an= d in these cases the "purely decorative" symbols are rarely if ev= er used.

all punctuation is decorative because the language exists without it = there isnt necessarily any requirement that punctuation be used and in fact= most languages historically have started their lives without much punctuat= ion some languages like latin and greek didnt even put spaces between words= now of course we find it very convenient to decorate our texts with punctu= ation and capital letters and those sorts of things it is easier to navigat= e a text when these little quote decorative unquote marks are use dont you = agree if you dont why dont you it seems quite obvious and it is certainly t= he case that historically writing preceded punctuation and punctuation deve= loped from simple like the space or the dot to complex like the inverted in= terrobang

I do not share your opinion that punctuation is optio= nal in the English language. It is a known fact that Lojban /does not use/ = punctuation.
=C2=A0

What I was trying to say about "purely decorative" is that in pri= nciple capitalization and non-alphabetic punctuation marks could be added o= r removed from a text in Lojban without affecting the actual text as it mig= ht be read or said aloud.

Well, of course, excepting the "capitalization&q= uot; bit, since Lojban uses capitalization to mark non-standard stress, bec= ause Lojban doesn't /use/ punctuation /at all/. That's akin to sayi= ng the addition or removal of guns from a lion pride would not affect the a= ctual deadliness of the pride.
=C2=A0

That is why would disagree with *replacing* "lu" by "=C2=AB&= quot; or "li'u" by "=C2=BB": if you later stripped = out the punctuation the text would not be the same.

I am not the one who argued for that, so I have no idea why you're ta= lking about with me. I am not in favor of punctuation /at all/, and since w= e had this argument already, back when you originally proposed to include L= ojban among your multi-lingual collection.
=C2=A0

>>> And in this respect, All foreign symbols, such as !?"=C2= =AB=C2=BB#$ etc., are entirely redundant and only serve to help non-profici= ent readers.
>>
>> They are redundant, yes, and may "serve to help non-proficien= t readers" but that is not their only function. Punctuation and capita= lization are the rule and not the exception for languages which write using= the Latin script. Since most everyone who comes to Lojban comes to it from= one of those languages, it makes little sense for Lojban to jettison typog= raphic richness for an aesthetic of sparseness. (That's my opinion anyw= ay.)
>
> Lojban didn't jettison for aesthetic reasons. It did so specifical= ly to attempt to maximize, as you say, "the words of the text as spoke= n should be the same as the words of the text as written". By making t= he punctuation be words, the level of similarity between spoken Lojban and = written Lojban is nearly one to one., and much, much higher than languages = in any script that use punctuation symbols.

I don't agree. Lojban was designed so that certain functional cat= egories, like "citation" and "parenthesis", had particl= es reflecting those categories, including beginning and ending particles. T= hat isn't the same thing as saying that "it made the punctuation b= e words", which I think is a simplistic reduction of the actual intent= . These particles (which are words, not "punctuation" which are g= raphs) do make Lojban more precise than many other languages, in this regar= d anyway.

It doesn't matter if you agree. It's a fact. = Facts don't change just because you don't like them.
=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 beginn= ing of a sentences just as the Lojban "xu" often does, yet the qu= estion mark is placed at the end of the sentence in Esperanto without any l= oss of meaning or confusion.

Michael

And now you're= repeating yourself. You've already said this, and I've already pro= vided my response. I won't waste my time with this particular subject a= ny further.

--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo piln= o be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Lu= ke, I am your father. :D )

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "= lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegrou= ps.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban= ?hl=3Den.
--f46d04088c75f0fe5f04c86c95ce--