From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu Wed May 17 05:41:37 1995 Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 03:32:24 -0400 From: "Dylan P. Thurston" Subject: Quantifiers (was Re: A modest proposal #2: verdicality) To: Bob LeChevalier Message-ID: mi cusku .o'inai di'e > Anyway, IMHO the syntax of sumti needs both rethinking and debugging. > From the state of this part of the grammar, I'd guess that it's > {puta'e} been patched; I think a rewrite rather than further patching > is in order. That's a bit strong, I think. Apologies. Lojban is a beautiful language, with a very unusual structure (for human languages) and lots of interesting features, yielding new and different modes of expression. {pe'i} There are just a few rough spots that could, well, use a little smoothing (from a rather formal language design point of view); but on the whole, it's very clean (well-ordered, compact). (Much cleaner than any natural language and even some computer languages, for instance.) [As an aside, I'd like to point out the use of English politeness rules in the above paragraph: I qualified the statements that might cause offense with {pe'i}. Politeness rules are a very cultural thing; Japanese, for instance, has very different rules from English. We might want to avoid exporting these same rules to Lojban. On the other hand, I, for one, might not be able to: English rules of politeness are too ingrained in me.] mu'o mi'e. dilyn. >From lojbab To: DPT@HUMA1.BITNET Subject: Re: Quantifiers (was Re: A modest proposal #2: verdicality) I think that the only Lojban rule of politeness is that attitudinals are to be used honestly - i.e to express actual emotions. Then if someone uses a lot of attitudinals, one can read the emotions much as one might read someone's body language, and the message of the predications may then become subsidiary to whatever the emotional context is. At least that is the way I think it will/should work %^). Much of the language is patched - there was, and still is - a sizable contingent of the community that considers Lojban to be Loglan, and certain cvhanges from the original design are thus out of order being contrary to JCB's original concepts for the language. I have always tried to make the language a fulfillment of his concept and not a new concept in itself. He may not appreciate this, but it is part of my own intellectual integrity that I have to do it this way. In any event, it was decided a few years ago that fiddling had to stop (much less: > a rewrite rather than further patching > > is in order. which might cause a full scale revolt of many long-timers. lojbab