Return-Path: Message-Id: <9110102144.AA11427@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Thu Oct 10 22:06:31 1991 Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!jimc Sender: Lojban list From: cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!jimc Subject: Re: auto-insertion or VSO X-To: Steven Mesnick X-Cc: lojban@cuvmb.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Ken Taylor , List Reader In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 10 Oct 91 00:36:42 EDT." <9110100935.AA07260@julia.math.ucla.edu> Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Thu Oct 10 22:06:31 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!cuvma.bitnet!LOJBAN Steven Mesnick writes: > It may be useful to know how a *very* new Lojban-learner deals with this > matter when reading Lojban sentences... I naturally (Intuitively?) > translated them in ways consistent with his arguments... I read that > sentence as meaning what Robert argues that it *should* mean. This is a significant point, that lots of people, myself included, would "intuitively" translate a sentence containing an abstract bridi as it "should" be, i.e. with the internal sumti starting in the abstraction's second place. But: Is this malglico? Nearly all Lojban people are native English speakers and that very likely does affect how they "intuitively" interpret a new language. We don't want to make Lojban into a mere farrago of our language biases derived from various native languages like English. But I think it's sufficient to choose that the "start in x2" rule is pragmatically useful, whether or not similar to English. Then we develop (or have already developed) syntax - transformation - semantic rules which cause the parser to obey it, and which then ease the user's burden to speak in Lojban. -- jimc