From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon Nov 13 13:37:17 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:37:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1GjjU6-0008A4-H5 for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:36:54 -0800 Received: from silene.metacarta.com ([65.77.47.18]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1GjjTx-00089w-Qp for lojban-list@lojban.org; Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:36:53 -0800 Received: from localhost (silene.metacarta.com [65.77.47.18]) by silene.metacarta.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7125914C8322 for ; Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:36:43 -0500 (EST) Received: from silene.metacarta.com ([65.77.47.18]) by localhost (silene.metacarta.com [65.77.47.18]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 18804-06 for ; Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:36:41 -0500 (EST) Received: from [65.77.47.178] (cheyenne.metacarta.com [65.77.47.178]) by silene.metacarta.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6A17314C8328 for ; Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:36:41 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <4558E569.3050404@ropine.com> Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:36:41 -0500 From: Seth Gordon User-Agent: Debian Thunderbird 1.0.2 (X11/20060926) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: "la" rule References: <45589298.20904@lojban.org> <4558BD0A.2030602@ropine.com> <4558DE3F.4030409@lojban.org> In-Reply-To: <4558DE3F.4030409@lojban.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20030616-p10 (Debian) at metacarta.com X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 13105 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: sethg@ropine.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Bob LeChevalier wrote: >> The tutorial and reference material on Lojban that I've seen don't say a >> lot about this option. E.g., _lojban. bei loi co'a cilre_ suggests that >> since "Mei Li" is Chinese for "beautiful", then someone named Mei Li >> could Lojbanize her name as "la melb." But why not "la melbi"? >> >> Perhaps the authors of all these works just assumed that they didn't >> need to spell out this aspect of the grammar because it was so obvious, >> but it wasn't obvious to me.... > > > It wasn't considered a "beginner" feature for English language speakers > learning the language, and all the teaching materials devised so far > have been written by at-best-intermediate speakers for the benefit of > beginners. > > The potential grammar of vocatives (things that can follow "doi" or > "mi'e") is non-trivial. Likewise, sumti grammar can get quite > complicated, since we designed things to be generically compatible with > every feature of every language that we could fit in, so as not to > unnecessarily metaphysically biased in the grammar. Ah. It seemed like a "beginner" feature to me because as far as I could glean, one could replace "le" or "lo" with "la" in a phrase, and the phrase would still parse--it would be like substituting "Spider-Man" for "the arachnoid human". But I suppose once "doi" and "mi'e" are thrown into the mix then one has to be more careful. To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.