From @uga.cc.uga.edu:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Tue Oct 6 16:28:41 1992 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 6 Oct 1992 16:28:40 -0400 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8622; Tue, 06 Oct 92 14:59:06 EDT Received: by UGA (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) id 1018; Tue, 06 Oct 92 14:59:04 EDT Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 19:30:58 BST Reply-To: C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK Sender: Lojban list From: C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK Subject: Re: more help (Todd Crane or Paul Fly ki'a) To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: <4znkSrT3aZL.A.KMB.530kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org> Response to Todd: > segu mi na'e gleki ledo na'e prami mi gu mi prami do > I am non-happy about the-thing-described-as-your non-love for me, > nevertheless, I love you. As Mark pointed out, you need a "nu" in there. I interpret the "segu" as "Whether or not I am unappy about ...., I love you" which is not quite the same. The point is that ".u" and its congeners DO NOT ASSERT their second operand (and neither do they assert its negation). So this is not saying that you are unhappy, merely that you love whether or not you are unhappy. Most people for "despite" and "nevertheless" use something like "seki'unai" (not therefore) - you will be asserting the two statements, and denying their causal connection. This may not be quite what you mean here, and I think Mark is right about attitudinals. Logically, what you are saying (I think) is mi na'e gleki li'o .ije mi prami do "I'm not happy .... AND I love you" the thing that makes AND inappropriate in English is not any extra logical baggage, but purely semantic/emotional: It might be straight contrast: .ijeku'i mi prami do or more specific emtions: mi na'e glaki .o'onai lenu do na'e prami mi .ijeku'i mi prami .iu do "I'm not happy (impatience) ... but I love you (love!)" NOnetheless, nice going for plunging into converted forethought logical independence! I doubt "segu" has ever been used before!. > noda zo'u da na'e .iucai sibdo do mi It looks to me like you're trying to get "iucai" to modify sidbo in a sort of tanru, and then negate it. It doesn't work like that. This is saying There's nothing that isn't an idea of you to me with an emotion of intense love attached to the "isn't". UI always refer to the speaker's emotional state, evidential support, pragmatic intention etc about the sentence: they cannot modify the meaning of any of the other words. (There is a debate as to whether UINAI is capable of negating a sentence or not, but that's a special case, as is "kau"). Your following examples (using a tanru and a lujvo) are much better. As Mark says, the prenex is unnecessary (and I wouldn't bother with the "za'e" here) but I can't fault them at all. > lu mi nupre be la lerel. na'e cmene mi be'o li'u se bacru ko'a I have little to add to what Mark said, except that I think he did not give much emphasis to the most important point. One of the most common mistakes lojbo make is leaving out levels of abstraction (we now have "tu'a" to let us do it legally!) Whenever you get a clause embedded in the English, you need one in the Lojban (and some other times besides). Examples of when this happens: I said that ... I tried to .... I promise [that] .... After he [did something], ... We were waiting for [somebody to do something] (Notice that "We were waiting for him" is properly "We were waiting for him to arrive" "mi denpa lenu ko'a mu'o klama" / "mi denpa tu'a ko'a". "denpa" takes an event as its x2 not a thing/person (I think).) fi'ico'omi'e kolin