From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMB.BITNET!LOJBAN Wed Jul 8 01:56:15 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Wed, 8 Jul 92 01:56 EDT Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA20461; Tue, 7 Jul 92 15:09:23 EDT Received: from pucc.Princeton.EDU by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA02394; Tue, 7 Jul 92 14:35:39 -0400 Message-Id: <9207071835.AA02394@relay1.UU.NET> Received: from PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU by pucc.Princeton.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3055; Tue, 07 Jul 92 14:35:08 EDT Received: by PUCC (Mailer R2.08 ptf033) id 3307; Tue, 07 Jul 92 14:09:14 EDT Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 14:05:30 -0400 Reply-To: "Mark E. Shoulson" Sender: Lojban list From: "Mark E. Shoulson" Subject: Wallops #8 X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: Ivan A Derzhanski's message of Thu, 2 Jul 1992 17:05:06 BST Status: RO >Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1992 17:05:06 BST >From: Ivan A Derzhanski >> Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1992 17:08:50 -0400 >> From: "Mark E. Shoulson" >> >Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1992 12:11:54 +1000 >> >From: nsn%MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU >> I don't like your usage of {ko'a me mi} for "he's mine". {me} is one of >> lojban's ambiguity-flags; the converted sumti could mean just about >> anything. In general, I'd be *far* more likely to figure that {me mi} >> meant "is me" (similar to {du mi} or {mi'e}) than "is mine". >True, although I think it would be plausible for someone to say {ko'a >me la xrist.} for `he is a Christian', which supports {ko'a me mi} >with the same meaning as uttered by Christ. Well, from what I've seen of {me}, it's used *very* often to mean something like {du}. I recall something of Nick's which had something of the form {da me lo broda poi brode}, in order to get a relative clause into a selbri. And for "he is a Christian", we have {ko'a xriso} (though that helps us not at all when we want first-person). I'd just be way more likely to interpret {me mi} as "is me". In a situation like this, maybe even {mezo'epe mi} might be good, using the {zo'epe} metonymy construct which I think sounds good. >> Maybe {cusku}'s better than {bacru}, too. >I'm afraid {bacru lu ... li'u} means {cusku la'e lu ... li'u} - you >utter the words to express their meaning. Yes, I was talking about style. What's of importance here is that the concept was expressed (MTRANS, using that idiom) from entity to entity, not that sounds warbled in the air. {cusku} catches the meaning better, or Nick's {crusku} would be good too. >> You seem fond of doubling brivla in tanru for emphasis, I'm not >> sure it's a good idea. >I'm sure it isn't. There are umpty-eleven ways in which the two >halves of a tanru may be related, and things don't become any simpler >from the head and the modifier being the same word. You know, {catra >catra} may be a killer of killers (say, an officer whose job is to >execute death sentences of murderers), not a great murderer. Yeah, the more I think about it, the less I like it, even in cases where Colin might permit it as being "obvious". There's too much of a slippery slope here. Reduplication is obvious in many languages, but remember that in a lojban tanru, the modificand is modified by the *modifier*, not that the modifier somehow points to what the modification should be (this is a lousy way of getting my point across). That is, I see in reduplication mostly a sort of extra-grammatical point, "If the two elements of a tanru are the same, it means augmentation," which is nowhere implied in lojban's tanru-making. {clira clira} means "earlyishly early", which might be feasible as "very early" but to me just makes me wonder how something can be "early in an early manner". Ditto {barda barda}, {slabu slabu}, etc. Remember, that's what we have {je'a} for in the first place. >Ivan ~mark