Return-Path: Message-Id: <9110130936.AA07617@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Sun Oct 13 06:46:05 1991 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: LA Group efforts - comments from Nora X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Sun Oct 13 06:46:05 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Mark's comments on the LA Group's aphorism efforts, as reported by Peter Thomas, as well as the group-wrok itself, were excellent. Nora throws in a few more comments: - *gicbau in the first aph. has an invalid medial - you want gicybau - 2nd aph. you want "su'a ro lo ..."; this appears to possibly be a typo. - Mark said this but with different emphasis: liryrai is misleading You said that the 'earliest bird gets the worm'. The superlative is implicitly singular, unless you are talking about a group of birds. The English does not imply that you have to be first, merely that you have to be early (as in 'early to bed, early to rise ...') - 3rd aph. translates as 'the set of (all events of non-deciding) is a decision. Most 'sets' are incapable of being 'decisions'. Avoid using set descriptors unless talking about set properties. Mark gave two alternatives 'da vitno ...' which is wrong, and 'roda poi vitno' which is better. The first claims only that 'at-least-ONE thing is permanent iff an event of change' - you need a roda zo'u pn the front to universalize it; the second claims that 'ALL things which are permanent are events of change'. Mark slipped in the bridi-tail version of the first alternative - nagi'a is not 'just about the same as' gi'o. Just to show that no one is perfect, I (lojbab) read the first aphorism >incorrectly< thinking of "ci mi'a fanva" as "three of our translators". The parser says I'm wrong: a quantifier like that binds more tightly on the following sumti, giving the desired "three of us are translators". To get what I read, you would need "ci lo mi'a fanva". Oops. In Lojban you don't put a sentence in past tense, unless it is obligatory for understanding. Past tense is obvious from context in your first sentence. lojbab (for Nora) lojbab@grebyn.com