From: (Mark E. Shoulson) id AA06918; Thu, 18 Mar 93 14:18:39 -0500 Date: Thu, 18 Mar 93 14:18:39 -0500 Message-Id: <9303181918.AA06918@startide.ctr.columbia.edu> To: cowan@snark.thyrsus.com Cc: lojbab@grebyn.com, nsn@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au, c.j.fine@bradford.ac.uk, vilva@viikki21.helsinki.fi, I.Alexander.bra0122@oasis.icl.co.uk, iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk Subject: Pro-sumti/pro-bridi paper, draft 1.1 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 >From: cowan@snark.thyrsus.com (John Cowan) >Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1993 14:36:59 -0500 (EST) >la mark. clsn. cusku di'e >> Also recall the discussion we had way back when about >> {mi cusku ledu'u ko sidju mi}, which had been used as "I ask you to help >> me" when it really should translate to "Be such that I ask you to help me," >> or "make me ask you for help", to put it colloquially. That should be >> mentioned. >I don't remember this discussion, and it brings up a disturbing consideration. >I agree that "mi cusku le du'u ko sidju mi" means "Make me ask you for help", >but then what >is< the translation of "I ask you to help me"? It looks like >we have a distinction between direct and indirect commands to parallel the >one between direct and indirect questions. And if questions and commands, >why not any UI? Seems like the whole vexed question may need some rethinking. The discussions was about someone's translation of some poetic text or another... I think I have it somewhere. I don't quite understand what question you're referring to, and what you mean by distinctions between indirect and direct questions/commands/UIs/whatever. What do you mean? >[Welsh material omitted] >Private inquiry: just what do all those Welsh vowels mean? I don't have >access to a decent (read IPA) description of them. Are there really 7 >vowel phonemes? I'll answer as best as I can, but bear in mind that I'm a beginnger at this Welsh stuff and my sources are all about Modern Welsh as she is spoke, so there are likely more distinctions historically. Welsh vowels: a e i o u w y. All vowels may be short or long. "s" is basically a Lojban {a}, short or long. "e" is a lojban {e}, i.e. epsilon, when short, but more an IPA /e:/ when long. "i" is lojban {i}/IPA /i:/ or /i/. It's sometimes used as a semivowel, /j/. "o" is lojban {o}, IPA /o:/ or /o/. Then it gets fun. Short "u" is pronounced like "i", IPA /i/. No, that's not a typo. "Pump" sounds like English "pimp", "punt" sounds like "pinn-t", etc. Long "u" is pronouced /i:/ in S. Wales, but more gutterally in N. Wales. The symbol my book has is /barred-i:/, but I'm not sure what sound that is. Anyone? Basically, *nowhere* is "u" sounded like /u/, more like /i/. This is a tricky thing for a foreigner to remember, I've found. "Mul" sounds like English "meal", "dau" sounds like English "die", etc. "w" is pronounced like /u:/ or /u/, sometimes used as a semivowel /w/ or even semiconsonantally, e.g. the common word-initials "gwl-" and "gwr-", which are not considered separate syllables. "y" has two sounds: clear and obscure. Clear "y" has pretty much the same sounds as "u": /i:/ or /barred-i:/ when long and /i/ when short. Obscure "y" is a schwa. It can be stressed when clear or obscure, though like all vowels cannot be long when unstressed. In the words I was using, the "y" is obscure. The stress supposedly falls on the penultimate, but listening to the tapes I've found that not to be true in many cases, including "yma" and "yna", where it sounds more like the stress is on the last syllable. The stress isn't very heavy anyway, so you could get away with it in either place. Incidentally, I recall a discussion about a le'avla for Wales, and the trouble caused by the prohibition against {y} in le'avla, since the Welsh name for Wales is "Cymru" -- {KYMri} in lojban orthography. Using a bit of Lojbab's method of falling back on writing when sounds fail us, I'd stick with {gugdrkimri/o}, since the "y" also makes the sound of "i", and in fact may have during the course of the derivation of the word (I heard something about how "Cymro"/Welshman comes from someone of the same "bro"/country, thus implying something with "Cym-" or "Cyn-" that nasalized the "b", and in almost all one-syllable words, "y" is clear. But the derivation needn't be true, of course). OBTW, I made a tiny error: "dyma" comes from "Gwe^l di yma", with a circumflex over the "e". >It doesn't, but it's poorly worded. I've expanded it. >> >6.15) na nei >> > >> >and how does it differ from >> > >> >6.16) dei jitfa >> > This-utterance is-false? >> >> OK, I give up. Put an answer-key at the bottom! >It's Evil, Truly Evil, and you should try to work out its meaning for >yourselves. Further deponent sayeth not. Well, 6.15 looks kind of like an assertion "whatever I'm saying, the opposite thereof", while 6.16 is a comment on itself. Should it be la'edei? No, that's certainly wrong. But should {jitfa} take a text as its x1? >> Also mention constructions like {vo'apedi'u} as alternatives to {lego'i}. >Not I. As I said to lojbab regarding the "re pai" controversy, I will not >use these papers to document what I believe to be the Wrong Thing. If >people say "re pai" for 2*pi, or "vo'a pe di'u" for "le go'i ku", the >language will not break, but I won't defend the usage in cold print. >To me, "vo'a pe di'u" means "that part of the x1 sumti of the current >bridi which pertains in some way to the previous sentence". OK, I thought the other usage was accepted, I didn't realize there was disagreement about it. >or more cleverly with a vocative question: > doi ma Ooh, I like that! ~mark