Message-Id: <199511251940.OAA15618@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Sat, 25 Nov 1995 12:28:01 -0700
Reply-To: Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>
Subject:      Re: self-descriptions?
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

>[Lojbab:
>> Fine, use brivla.  Tenses apply to whole bridi.

And:
>This is a pretty ugly solution: {citno bao kei bao ralju}, or
>{citno me kei bao ralju}, or {citno zio kei bao ralju} - they're
>all ugly. Semantically, ZAhO works quasitanruishly, like NAhE,
>so I think it oughtn't to apply to whole bridi.]

Are those even grammatical?  I think he meant something like {selfanmo citno
ke ralju} and {selfanmo ke citno ralju}.  Well, {fanmo} may not be quite
right, but something like that.

Or you ought to be able to use zei: {citno ba'o zei ralju} or {ba'o zei
citno ralju}.

>(c) V-final is quite common among languages. In Japanese, for instance,
>you get the equivalent of fa-fe-fi sumti in any order, plus final selbri.
>I'm amazed that Japanese people can manage to speak it, but speak it
>they do.

I have no argument with V-final; it's zabnalglico.  I do think there's a
slight bias against it in Lojban because it'll more often require the use of
{kei}.  But {kei}'s not so bad.

>From: Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>
>> All those FAs and be-beis count as tons of "stuff".
>> I agree with Goran. Fi-fa-fu-Lojban is very obfuscating, especially in
>> combination with jaifau-Lojban.
>
>Is there a clear reason for that, apart from its unfamiliarity?

Yes.  fi-fai-fo-fum are very much like cases, but the fo-ative case doesn't
have a generic meaning outside a particular selbri.  Maybe the fa-ative
tends to be nominative and the feative is accusative, but by the time you're
at the 3rd or 4th place the meaning is completely context-dependent.

Hmm.. it would be interesting to pretend the FA's were proper cases, and do
a study of the gi'uste to see what the fo-places have in common -- a likely
bizarre and lojbanic way of classifying the world. :-)

Whether the fi-fai-fo-fum style of scrambling places turns out to be
understandable I'm not sure yet, but you'd *think* it would be slightly
harder than scrambling ordinary latin cases.

>So what? (And I don't see why it can't be labelled {fa} rather than
>{fai}.)

Because FA et. al. don't work the same way as BAI tags; they're strictly
numbered places, so {se broda fa mi} does not mean the same thing as {broda
fa mi}.  I suppose it could have been done either way, though.

>Well by that reasoning we ought to have a NU for every sumti.
>If
>   le nu broda koa koe kei = le jaifau broda be koa bei koe,
>then let
>   le fa'a'a broda koa koe kei = le broda be koa bei koe
>   le fe'e'e koa broda zoe koe kei = le se broda be koa bei koe
>etc. That's actually a good idea. But I don't like the event
>argument being singled out for special treatment.

That is an interesting idea.  I haven't grokked your criticism of NU before now.