Date: Fri, 16 Dec 1994 12:56:25 +0200
From: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Subject: Re: Q-kau
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
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> la lojbab cusku di'e
> Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1994 01:34:34 -0500
> From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
> Subject: Re: Q-kau
>
> BTW, I am also interested in how a language with totally free word order
> handles the quantificational problems.  Esperanto claims to have totally free
> word order - how does it deal with "Everybody loves somebody" with object
> first?  Any other order-free languages provide insights?

  Finnish has a relatively free word order as the parts of speech can
  usually be identified by the case endings. Quantification is a headache.
  To start with, it is often quite impossible to tell what a simple
  quantified sentence means, and if you change the word order, the
  meaning can change or remain the same - which really doesn't matter
  if you don't know for sure to begin with :-) You have to formulate
  your sentences very carefully if you want to be sure that you'll be
  understood correctly (I have done a lot of proofreading of graduate
  and postgraduate level academic dissertations, and it seems that many
  people have only a very limited grasp of the intricacies).

  Personally I think that Lojban ought to have available such forms
  of quantified sumti that the meaning of a bridi involving these
  sumti survives SE conversion, i.e. the distributive properties of
  quantifiers ought to be controllable so that a desired distribution
  doesn't dictate the ordering of sumti. For both stylistic reasons
  (free topicalization) and syntactic reasons (economy of constructs)
  it would be nice to be in total control. I've done my share of
  restructuring NL sentences to contorted forms in order to get the
  quantificational aspects down just pat - I'd like to avoid that
  kind of unnecessary inelegance in Lojban.

> lojbab


--

  co'o mi'e veion

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.i mi du la'o sy. Veijo Vilva sy.
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