Date: Mon, 09 Jan 1995 00:00:29 -0700
From: Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>
Subject: Re: lesson 1, exercises (from the draft text)
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Reply-to: Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>
Message-id: <01HLMU2JM2GI001NA8@FIPORT.FUNET.FI>
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>coi

coi

>Therefore, i'm posting this to see if anyone out there
>can correct the errors and comment so i don't get much further
>without understanding what i've supposedly learned already.

I'll try, but I'm nobody official, so I'm not the last word.

Almost everything looked OK to me.  I agree with your interpretation of this:

>3.  the one standing hits the one sitting with (the one standing)'s head
>    impacting at/in the apple
>    (le sanli ku cu darxi le zutse ku le stedu ku le plise ku)
>    I think either the sumti order changed with the brivla "darxi". I
>    would like to think that what happened is someone hit someone in
>    the head with an apple.

The only real problem I noticed in the rest of it was a couple times when
you got some places confused, in "cmalu" and "cukta".  But everything was
substantially correct.

>1.  the bottle is smaller than (the) usual (bottle)
I think the second place of "cmalu" is the aspect of the bottle which is
small -- so a better translation might be "The bottle is small along the
typical dimension", or "The usual part of the bottle is small".

>11. ti cu cukta zo'e la crlok. xolms. zo'e zo'e
The second place of "cukta" is the subject, and the third is the author.  It
should be "ti cu cukta la crlok. xolms. zo'e zo'e zo'e"

>15. ta prenu
This is probably right, too, but I bet they were looking for just "prenu".

>17. (sorry... i really can't even think of one using 'attack')

If you were ordering your soldiers to attack, you might say "attack!",
meaning "I order you to attack them".  If you were standing around the
campfire and noticed enemies unexpectedly flooding over the top of the hill
you might say "attack!", meaning "Look out!  An attack!"

They're trying to make a point about the distinction between observatives
and commands, I suppose, but I still think it's kind of forced.  A logical
language *should* make a distinction, as lojban does, but I don't think I've
ever actually had a problem with that particular kind of ambiguity in English.

>2.  that thing over there is the head of ( the thing which is smaller than
>     the leg)
Same problem as before with "cmalu".  I'd say "that thing over there is the
head of the thing which is small in the leg", or "that is the head of the
thing with small legs"

>8.  this is a book by Marie Antoinette about Carl deGaul, intended for
>     the people (as an audience) (Man, that one was tough to translate
>     back into _reasonable_ English)
It's a weird sentence but you did it right.

>10. le senci ku cu sanli le cukta be zo'e bei la crlok. xolms. be'o ku
Again, same problem with "cukta".

>That's all for lesson 1.  I am almost afraid to go on to lesson 2
>without corrections (especially for exercise 1-6).

Don't be -- you seem to understand it perfectly.