From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Mon Mar 9 10:20:05 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Mon, 9 Mar 92 10:19 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA02082; Mon, 9 Mar 92 10:16:30 EST Received: from cunixf.cc.columbia.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA07308; Mon, 9 Mar 92 08:17:03 -0500 Received: from cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu by cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (5.59/FCB) id AA30405; Mon, 9 Mar 92 08:17:08 EST Message-Id: <9203091317.AA30405@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.1) with BSMTP id 2514; Mon, 09 Mar 92 08:15:27 EST Received: by CUVMB (Mailer R2.07) id 2369; Mon, 09 Mar 92 08:15:03 EST Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1992 13:13:27 GMT Reply-To: Ivan A Derzhanski Sender: Lojban list From: Ivan A Derzhanski Subject: Hans Christian Andersen: countercomments To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: nsn@AU.OZ.MU.EE.MULLIAN's message of Mon, 9 Mar 1992 18:43:14 +1000 <21407.9203090918@cogsci.ed.ac.uk Status: RO > Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1992 18:43:14 +1000 > From: nsn@AU.OZ.MU.EE.MULLIAN > > In-Reply-To: Your [Colin Fine's] message of "Fri, 06 Mar 92 19:10:07 GMT." > <13762.9203061910@mail.bradford.ac.uk> > > My experimental cmavo, given > lenu xy. cu broda cu galfi y'y. zy. > produces > xy. xe'e galfi y'y zy lenu xy. broda > which once more matches the 1990 structure. Can you use {xe'e} with na'e {galfi}, though? How did you decide that {lenu xy. broda} has to become the fourth argument of {xe'e galfi}? > In fact, I have never quite *liked* {tu'a}, and believe that it can often > be omitted with no ambiguity. <...> > > That having been said, I already find a phrase of the type {mi troci le > vorme} instead of {mi troci tu'a le vorme}=={mi troci lenu karyri'a le > vorme} to be irritating. Mark has taken to {tu'a} even more than I. And > the distinction is not always illdefined nor pointless. It's a matter of > extent. And I welcome this as one further opportunity for stylistic > divergence. (I suspect Ivan will be on your side). I think having {tu'a} is a good idea, but being forced to use it all the time is not. In particular, I believe that, if one of the places of a certain predicate is defined so that whatever argument is there must be prefixed by {tu'a} unless it is an abstraction (NU something), then {tu'a} should be allowed to be elided as redundant. But this is not the case in {ri selkecmlu ri'a tu'a lo carvi}. The rain is as much of an event as {NU ...}, and you can be wet {ri'a lo carvi} (no {tu'a} there), but in the case of {selkecmlu} we have an indirect causal link. I think the same is true in the case of the eiderdowns, since you can have things that are not NUs and still are direct conditions of sensing. Note that {tu'a} doesn't solve too many problems. What does {mi troci tu'a le vorme} mean? Tried to what the door? Open it, close it, break it, take it off its hinges? The literal translation of {mi troci le vorme} in Bulgarian means `I taste the door' or maybe `I test the door' (try to use it, see whether it works properly). In all natural languages that I can think of, "want sthg" means `want to have sthg' (whatever "have" may mean). In Lojban {djica tu'a lo nolraixli} may mean `want to strangle a m.n.m.', `want to see off a m.n.m.'... > > > {ni'a} is "below"; {mo'ini'a} is "downwards". Why's that, by the way? The FAhA cmavo are described as "direction modals", not "location modals". And some of them are clearly dynamic in meaning. > I remember your phrase "UI depend on the deontology of the speaker". Well, > I went for "kau refers to the knower of the sentence it is in". Thus > la djan. djuno ledu'u ri klama zo'ekau > means John knows where he's going, not that John's going somewhere, and I > know where. Right? You mean to say that {kau} can only be used in a "knowing" sentence? One with {djuno} as a predicate? Come on, Nick. This is totally absurd. Ivan