Message-Id: <9202132001.AA07044@relay2.UU.NET>
Date:         Thu, 13 Feb 1992 14:58:42 EST
Reply-To: "Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!shoulson>
Sender: Lojban list <cbmvax!uunet!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!LOJBAN>
From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!shoulson>
Subject:      Names modified by adjectives
To: John Cowan <cowan@snark.thyrsus.com>
In-Reply-To:  "61510::GILSON"'s message of Thu, 13 Feb 1992 14:03:00 EST
Status: RO

Bruce writes:

>You mean in Lojban you can't modify a proper name by a Lojban adjective? You
>can't talk about "the first Elizabeth" or "the most populous Springfield in
>the United States"? This seems to be a weakness of the language if so.

Watch it.  What is a Lojban "adjective"?  Lojban has no adjectives.  The
part of speech doesn't apply.  Lojban has brivla, which may wind up getting
used, in sumti made from tanru, after a fashion reminiscient of adjectives,
but they're not adjectives.  They are brivla.  The fact that bothers you is
that you can't build a tanru using a cmene.  Well, I suppose you can, using
{me}, maybe something like {la stici mela .oranj.}, but that's way hideous.

You can talk about "The first Elizabeth", using stuff like relative
clauses {la .eLIZabet. poi pamoi}, but it doesn't appear to be part of the
*name* to me.  That is, if I'm talking about someone named "First
Elizabeth" (like "West Orange", wherein I'm not really concerned that it's
"Orange which is West"---that might be another town named Orange in a state
west of here), you can't make a tanru out of the cmene, or otherwise glue
in a brivla as part of the name.

~mark