From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Mon Apr 1 12:45:24 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 29 Mar 1993 21:04:30 -0500 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 9705; Mon, 29 Mar 93 21:03:08 EST Received: from CUVMB.BITNET by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 5099; Mon, 29 Mar 93 21:04:05 EST Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1993 17:45:24 -0500 Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Re: TECH: grammar updates X-To: Lojban List To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: <9303291124.AA00944@relay1.UU.NET> from "C.J.Fine@bradford.ac.uk" at Mar 29, 93 12:01:58 pm Status: OR Message-ID: la lojbab. cusku di'e > > If the result of the debate is that "mau" goes away, then we are making a > > significant change in the language, since it is one of the more used > > cmavo, to my recollection, as well as one that dates back to Loglan. > > > > I thus suspect that there must be a way developed that allows the pragmatic > > abbreviation implict in the cmavo, and that there will be opposition from > > the conservative forces otherwise (unless this is "slipped by" on them, > > which I cannot support). la kolin. cusku di'e > I would say, let's not take it away, but let's discourage its use. (Indeed, > at one level, it could even be used in teaching in a sort of "This is one > way you might try and do this, and some people do, but let's look at > what it really means"). > As I've remarked before, there are whole swathes of older versions that > are no longer regarded as kosher, most noteably implicit sumti-raising. Nick got the shudders at the idea of killing it, too. But what's left for it to do? There's the rare true-sumti-tcita use like: 1) .i li'i nunsma semau ro valsi An experience of silence more-than any word (from lojbab's "Language" translation, JL15:78) and there's the incidental "ne semau": 2) mi ne semau do nelci la betis. I (who incidentally am exceeded by you in something-unspec) like Betty. Even if pragmatics tells us that the "something-unspec" (the missing x3 place of zmadu) is "liking Betty", and also that the missing x1 place of "zmadu" is "mi", this isn't the classical comparative claim; it affirms both that I like Betty and that your liking exceeds mine. Nothing wrong with it, but it may be more confusing than it's worth. A scan through my on-line Lojban text (all of Lojban List, plus a fair sampling of other texts) reveals very very few uses of "mau" in live text (that is, excluding concocted examples to make a point about "mau" itself). The overwhelmingly dominant way of making comparisons in Lojban as it is is to use "-mau", the rafsi. All the uses of cmavo "mau" that I found were of the now-forbidden type, expressing pure comparisons with "ne" = "*mo'u", except for Example 1 above. -- John Cowan cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban.