Return-Path: Message-Id: <9109131717.AA16743@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Fri Sep 13 13:36:04 1991 Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!MATH.UCLA.EDU!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!jimc Sender: Lojban list From: cbmvax!uunet!MATH.UCLA.EDU!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!jimc Subject: Re: Translation To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 06 Sep 91 09:51:26 +1000." <9109052356.AA11770@julia.math.ucla.edu> Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Fri Sep 13 13:36:04 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN > Date: Fri, 6 Sep 1991 09:51:26 +1000 > From: nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU > Subject: Re: Translation > Hope this pleases you, because I advocate such dikyjvo analysis for all > {rinka} compounds; save a hell of a lot of time. Before jimc starts huzzahing > though, I reiterate what I, John Cowan, and, when he understands what Jim is > talking about, Lojbab, have been saying: an analysis of all possible lujvo > by an unambiguous dikyjvo test is not possible in Lojban. For starters, there > is rarely a way of telling between the two major categories of lujvo, the > broda be brode type ("transitive", of which the above analysis, "event ab- > straction", is a special case) and broda je/joi/poi brode ("parellel"). Huzzah! Huzzah! You're quite right that it's hard to distinguish parallel dikyjvo from the transitive and event abstraction types, and I found I needed special grammar in -gua!spi to make the distinction solid, grammar whose precise analog is not feasible in Lojban. It will take some work to figure out a suitable substitute in Lojban -- something that I don't feel comfortable to just go out and prescribe. Lacking the grammar, you just have to "know", for example, that the combination of a directional property and a motion word is parallel while rinka and similar category members are never parallel. I'd rather have this distinction made by grammar, but it's better to do it word by word than to have to make a creative judgement on every single lujvo. You are also correct that the dikyjvo mechanism will be called upon to handle a great variety of combination meanings. But it surprised even me to find out how much would straighten itself out simply and automatically when: a. Place structures are uniform over word categories and are designed to be most productive in dikyjvo. b. Cleft place interpretation rules are used to import main-level sumti to interior abstractions and even "thing-type" sumti. Occasionally even x2 may be imported this way. Your posydji example illustrates this point; speakers want to use the lujvo as a gismu-like relation without having to fill buried places by explicit words. c. The same rules are allowed to run backward (retro-replication) to export buried sumti to containing bridi. (By the way, "word category" is a small grenade. For this purpose I categorize pragmatically by typical behavior in dikyjvo, not semantically.) -- jimc